Opinion

How Shenzhen can win the ‘AI for science’ race

Rather than copy the research-focused models of Beijing and Shanghai, the tech hub must leverage its industrial depths to become a premier lab for experimentation and deployment

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A man stands next to a poster showing robots mimicking human expressions from Shenzhen Xiaoquan Technology during the International AI Application and Robotics Innovation Exhibition in Beijing on March 18. Photo: AFP

Dr Shaoshan Liu is director of embodied AI at the Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Society (AIRS).

Published: 4:30pm, 27 Aug 2026

The next big competition in artificial intelligence is over science. The question is shifting from who has the largest model to who can use AI to shorten the discovery cycle: forming a hypothesis, running simulations, designing an experiment, operating equipment, collecting results and learning from them.

The United States made that shift explicit. The Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission aims to bring together 17 national laboratories into an integrated discovery platform to double the productivity and impact of US research and innovation within a decade. This year, the programme announced a partnership with Japan, reinforcing the idea that AI for science is becoming infrastructure and a network, not simply another model.

China is moving in the same direction but increasingly through cities. Beijing’s 2025 plan calls for common scientific-intelligence infrastructure, at least 10 high-quality scientific databases, more than 10 million users and at least eight benchmark applications by 2027. Shanghai’s “Hundred Teams, Hundred Projects” initiative offers support for up to 70 per cent of approved investment, capped at 50 million yuan (US$6 million). The race to harness AI for science is no longer merely national.