The government of Haidian district signs a cooperation memorandum with China's internet giant Baidu on Feb 9. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The government of Haidian district signed a cooperation memorandum with China's internet giant Baidu on Feb 9, intending to build the "city brian" of Haidian district.

The two parties will push forward construction of a smart city, build a new urban format, and make breakthroughs in intelligent construction in fields of governance, traffic and urban management.

Yu Jun, secretary of the Haidian district Party committee, said that the district is now accelerating its informatization and building a modern urban management system to work as the "brain" of the city.

New technologies including cloud computing, big data, and artificial intelligence will be first applied to urban management, traffic management, environmental protection, and public security.

The government of Haidian district will open government data resources and actively promote data integration, analysis and utilization. It aims to possess the world's leading cluster of autonomous driving technological innovation and industrial development.

Baidu Chairman and CEO Robin Li said that the company will make full use of its advantages in AI technologies to help Haidian district to build a smart city platform.

Baidu has been investing heavily in AI technology and applications for the past few years, with major breakthroughs already made in autonomous driving and smart voice interaction systems.