The AI park in a suburb of Beijing is expected to cost around €2 billion, cover almost 55 hectares, accommodate some 400 companies, and generate an annual output value of more than €7 billion. The park will focus on big data, cloud computing, biometrics, and deep learning, r eports state news agency Xinhua . Its technological infrastructure will include a 5G mobile network, a supercomputer, and cloud services. In addition, the developers are seeking partnerships with Chinese and overseas universities, research institutes, and other interested companies.

AI is rapidly becoming a key factor in industry, as other figures show. According to a recent survey , half of all Japan’s major firms are using or planning to use AI in the near future. 33 of the 121 organizations surveyed said they had already replaced a portion of their business operations conventionally carried out by humans with AI.

And it’s a similar picture in Germany. “Artificial intelligence has arrived in German companies,” writes information technology consultancy Sopra Steria . In Germany, it is in particular management that is driving AI, since the main goals for management are to get a grip on increasing volumes of data and to cut labor costs.