Taiyuan, capital of North China's Shanxi province, has ushered in a golden era for the artificial intelligence (AI) industry.

The city has formed an AI industrial cluster thanks to the implementation of policies and measures targeting the AI sector in recent years.

It has cultivated many competitive companies in the fields of robots, drones and intelligent hardware, such as Shanxi Keda Automation Control Co and OMH Science Group Co, and introduced several key AI projects, including Great Wall intelligent manufacturing and Sugon advanced computing center projects, setting a solid industrial foundation.

This year, the platform-based world-class AI maker DeepBlue Technology (Shanghai) Co and intelligent speech industrial leader iFLYTEK Co have established partnerships with Taiyuan to jointly construct and develop a medical AI project focusing on virus nucleic acid detection and an AI research institute.

Meanwhile, Taiyuan has seized decisive opportunities in the data industry. Obtaining massive structured data has become the key for companies to make technological breakthroughs in response to the increasing number of AI application scenarios.

Early in September 2018, Baidu (Shanxi) AI Data Annotation Industry Center settled in the city and has introduced dozens of excellent data annotation companies from all over China. It is currently the data annotation center with the largest personnel numbers and output scale in the country.

Baidu Inc recently announced that it would train 50,000 AI data annotators at its Shanxi-based center and introduce more AI partners in the next five years.

In addition to Baidu (Shanxi) AI Data Annotation Industry Center, local data annotation companies represented by Shanxi Tongfang Zhiwang Digital Publishing Technology Co have sprung up.

With the approach of the 2020 China (Taiyuan) Artificial Intelligence Conference on Oct 31, Taiyuan will seek more opportunities and partners and open up a broader space for its AI development.