The Lin-gang Special Area – located in East China's Shanghai – will try to gather 20,000 to 30,000 professionals and 500 enterprises in the artificial intelligence industry in the next three years, according to an action plan unveiled on Aug 18.

It also aims to increase the scale of its AI industry to 50 billion yuan ($7.36 billion) by 2025, said Wu Xiaohua, deputy-secretary of the Party working committee of Lin-gang Special Area.

Lin-gang will build a first-class intelligent computing center, top-notch AI laboratories and an international algorithm innovation center to improve its basic core strengths in the field of AI.

It will also build more entrepreneurial service platforms to make the area an entrepreneurial hot spot.

The action plan calls for accelerating the research and development of key systems and components in the AI industry, such as software, chips and sensors.

Lin-gang hopes to expand the industry scale of high-end intelligent terminals, such as intelligent-connected vehicles, which is the largest AI terminal. It will also pay close attention to emerging terminals such as smart wearable devices, service robots, interactive terminals and unmanned aerial vehicles.

As application demonstration scenarios are key to the industrialization of new AI technologies developed in laboratories, Lin-gang will sort out application scenarios in areas such as manufacturing, urban governance, transportation and cultural tourism to help enterprises industrialize their products.