Opening Ceremony: China and Chongqing Municipality

opening ceremony: A variety of AI hardware and applications showcased at the 2019 World Artificial Intelligence Conference WAIC in Shanghai, which runs from Thursday to Saturday, have stirred greater interest in AI technologies that are all the rage these days, according to Global Times China. Still, China needs to stay coolheaded and push for technology-based innovation amid escalating trade tensions with the US. This seems especially the case in the arena of AI, which has increasingly become a two-man contest. At the opening ceremony of the 2019 Smart China Expo in Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality on Monday, Chinese Vice Premier Liu He stated that China needs to strengthen AI basic research and technological research and development. Findings from a recent survey by US consulting firm A.T. Kearney showed that 39 percent of almost 450 senior business executives worldwide reckon that China is likely to overtake the US as the global leader in AI, while 35 percent of the respondents think this scenario is unlikely. The UK is ranked third with 404 AI businesses, followed by Canada with 303 and India with 169. Numbers measuring the global AI landscape also suggest China is playing catch-up with the US. By the end of March, there were 5,386 active AI firms across the world, according to figures released in April by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology CAICT a research institute under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology . The US is home to 2,169 AI firms while the Chinese mainland has 1,189 AI companies. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.