China will host the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence conference and a high-level meeting on “Global AI governance” in Shanghai in July.
The World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) is one of the world’s leading AI events, bringing together top experts, scholars, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders from around the globe to discuss the latest advances, innovative applications, and future trends in AI.
The conference establishes a technical program committee and invites prominent scholars, experts to share the latest research achievements, exchange academic ideas. According to the World Artificial Intelligence Academic, the conference organizes high-level academic paper solicitations and selections.
During the conference, relevant academic organizations, research institutes, and universities will host multiple joint forums and roundtable discussions to foster interdisciplinary and cross-sector cooperation.
“China looks forward to taking the conference as an opportunity to further strengthen international cooperation on AI with all parties,” said Xinhua, the official state-run press agency quoted Zhou Haibing, deputy head of the National Development and Reform Commission as saying.
AI governance bears on the future of humanity and is a common issue facing all countries, Zhou said, emphasising that the country upholds multilateralism and the principles of openness and inclusiveness, and has actively promoted global governance and international cooperation on AI, contributing Chinese solutions to global development in the intelligent era.
WAICA 2026 has unveiled its first batch of distinguished speakers, including You He, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and Bowen Zhou, director of Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
The technical program committee of the conference has Andrew Chi-Chih Yao as its general chair. He is a professor at Tsinghua University and the founding dean of its institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences.
The chairs of the committee are Qinghua Zheng, a well known Chinese computer scientist and AI expert. He is currently the president of Xi’an Jiaotong University and Weinan E, a professor at Peking University and a professor emeritus at Princeton University and currently directs the AI for Science Institute in Beijing.
The committee has vice chairs Yugang Jiang, a professor and dean of the School of Computer Science and the School of Software at Fudan University and is also director of the university’s Shanghai Engineering Research Centre for Video Technology and Systems; Xuelong Li, chief technology officer (CTO) of China Telecom and the director of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence (TeleAI) of the telecom and Yunji Chen, professor at Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The theme of the conference of this year has been yet not revealed meanwhile the theme of 2025 was “Global solidarity in the AI Era”. Under this theme WAIC highlighted the need for international cooperation and shared governance to ensure the responsible development of artificial intelligence.
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