CPC SIP Working Committee and SIP Administrative Committee recently issued "Action plan for development of artificial intelligence industry in SIP" to facilitate development of big-data-and-cloud-computing-based artificial intelligence (AI) industry and promote the application of AI to intelligent manufacturing, hardware and software terminals and service industry.

The overall goal of the action plan is to, by 2020, build SIP into an AI-concerned innovation cradle, demonstration place and industrial cluster well known at home and abroad with five or more AI-related industrial parks, incubation bases and innovation platforms, 10-billion-yuan-level AI industrial development fund, two or three 1-billion-yuan-level and one or two 10-billion-yuan-level leading AI enterprises.

According to the plan, the focus of development will be put on sectors of computer auditory and vision, biometric identification, complex environment identification, natural language understanding, new human-computer interaction, intelligent decision support, etc. And great efforts will be made to bring in competitive enterprises and projects from home and abroad and develop local enterprises.

To ensure that the action plan can be fulfilled on schedule, a few policies are put into operation. For example, 1.5 billion yuan ($218 million) will be input by SIP Finance Bureau to support introduction of leading AI projects and enterprises, intelligent manufacturing technological upgrading, introduction and training of relevant talents, construction of major infrastructure, etc. An AI Fund worth of 20 billion yuan ($2.9 billion) to 30 billion yuan ($4.4 billion) will be set up by State Asset Supervision & Administrative Office of SIP, with no less than 5 billion yuan ($726 million) raised by the end of 2017. And major AI projects will be given priority to get land and space designations.

According to survey report of SIP Science, Technology and Informatization Bureau, SIP has clustered over 600 enterprises engaged in AI, big data, cloud computing, etc, which achieved 35 billion yuan ($5 billion) output value last year. Some enterprises like Positec and Jiangsu Beiren Robot System, which integrate AI with intelligent manufacturing, develop better. Over 15 institutions of higher learning have established AI-concerned majors or labs in SIP, such as Brain Space Information Technology Institute (Suzhou) set up by Huazhong University of Science and Technology. All these lay a solid foundation for faster development of AI industry in SIP.

SIP is the first among national development zones that has issued documents specially to encourage the development of AI. This time, "Opinions on supporting AI-concerned industries" were simultaneously issued.