(Yicai Global) July 10 -- The post-Covid-19 digital transformation of businesses and intelligent city development will present huge opportunities for the artificial intelligence industry, a top official from the Shanghai government said at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference’s AI Evening in Hi-Tech Pujiang Forum.

Shanghai aims to become a world leader in AI by 2025 with an industrial output of CNY250 billion (USD35.7 billion), said Chen Mingbo, deputy secretary-general of the city’s municipal government.

The city is committed to providing the AI industry with an optimal growth environment, Chen said. It will foster and strengthen emerging industrial clusters in intelligent driving, robots and other hardware, and strive to improve the sector’s basic capabilities with a focus on smart sensors, chips, and software.

Shanghai will increase the scale of the AI industry and strengthen its industrial competitiveness, Chen said. It will also build a global data hub, an open source algorithm platform, a super-computing center and other major innovation platforms as well as develop 20 leading companies from AI’s three main elements of data, algorithms and computing power.

The development of the AI industry requires government guidance with enterprise as the mainstay, Chen said. Shanghai will help AI firms solve financing difficulties and provide guidance to help them list on the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s Nasdaq-style Star Market.

It will allow regulatory forbearance, a regulatory sandbox that will allow innovators to trial new products and services without some of the usual rules applying, and permitting innovation before regulation.

The WAIC forum, chaired by Yang Yanqing, managing director of the Yicai Research Institute and deputy editor-in-chief of Yicai Media, discussed the new AI wave. Distinguished guests included William Ding, chairman and chief executive of NetEase, Allen Zhu, managing partner of GSR Ventures, Xu Li, co-founder and CEO of SenseTime, Bill Huang, founder and CEO of CloudMinds, Ji Xinhua, chairman, CEO and president of UCloud Technology and Wang Jin, CEO of Allrise.Ai.

Editors: Chen Juan, Kim Taylor