Shanghai conference sets stage for US-China face-off in heated race for AI supremacy

Shanghai will host its eighth annual flagship artificial intelligence (AI) conference this weekend as China ramps up competition against the US for supremacy in the fast-developing technology.

The three-day World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), with the theme of “Global Solidarity in the AI Era”, will kick off on Saturday with an opening keynote from Premier Li Qiang, who also headlined last year’s event. A high-level meeting on global AI governance will be held in tandem with the conference.

The main forum, taking place at the Shanghai World Expo Centre, will feature a line-up of renowned international scientists and business leaders. Nobel laureate and “AI godfather” Geoffrey Hinton, Harry Shum, council chairman at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Turing Award winner Andrew Yao are among the participants.

Prominent business leaders who will speak include former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, MiniMax founder Yan Junjie and SenseTime CEO Xu Li, along with senior executives from Siemens and Schneider Electric.

The SenseTime booth at last year’s WAIC in Shanghai. Photo: NurPhoto via Getty Images
The SenseTime booth at last year’s WAIC in Shanghai. Photo: NurPhoto via Getty Images

The conference represents an opportunity for China to showcase to the global AI community its latest advancements amid a heated race between the world’s two largest economies.

On Wednesday, the White House released a 28-page AI Action Plan designed to further strengthen exports of American AI technology to China and limit the spread of Chinese AI models, as part of the Trump administration’s sweeping plan to shape the rules governing the fast-moving technology.

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