China looks to wide application of artificial intelligence

A visitor experiences a facial-recognition device at Ant Financial's stand at an internet finance expo in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. "While we are just getting started, we have made prominent progress in applying artificial intelligence in smart city and intelligent customer service on automobiles," said Liu. "If we define 2016 as the first year of China's artificial intelligence, this year will be the beginning of applications of artificial intelligence in the country," said Liu Qingfeng, board chairman of tech firm iFlytek Co. Ltd. Internet giant Baidu set up a national deep learning technology lab in Beijing in March. Another tech giant Xiaomi set up an "Explorer's Lab" last year to research artificial intelligence and will release an "exciting AI product" in the coming six months, according to Lei Jun, founder and CEO of Xiaomi. "We will accelerate R&D on and commercialization of new materials, artificial intelligence, integrated circuits, bio-pharmacy, 5G mobile communications, and other technologies, and develop industrial clusters in these fields," the report read.