WAIC Academic to give China a bigger role in the global AI arena

The inauguration of WAIC Academic will help China gain a stronger academic foothold in the global AI arena and provide timely answers to pressing real-world issues, industry experts and academicians said.

As an integral part of the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, the WAICA was held on Saturday to showcase China's AI research strengths and connect with the international academic community. With Turing Award laureate Andrew Chi-Chih Yao serving as the conference chair, this year's WAICA has attracted overseas experts from the United States, Japan, Singapore, France, among others.

The conference received 282 valid submissions of academic papers and accepted 57 of them. It has piloted a new review mechanism combining AI-assisted format verification with double-blind peer review, aiming to build an open, professional and traceable academic exchange platform.

John Edward Hopcroft, Turing Award winner and a computer science pioneer, said in his video address that no one could have foreseen its present-day achievements when computer science was first taking shape over 60 years ago.

AI today stands at a similar dawn. Therefore, young researchers should maintain their curiosity about the nature of intelligence and boldly tackle difficult problems so that their work can bring AI's benefits to the general public, he said.