Shanghai: When Ordinary AI Is No Longer Enough for World Domination

While the whole world argues about whether ChatGPT will replace programmers, Shanghai has decided to play for keeps. At the opening of the fourth session of the Shanghai People's Congress of the 16th convocation, Mayor Gong Zheng presented not just a work report, but a genuine manifesto of technological expansion. If you thought China was slowing down, the news from Shanghai suggests otherwise: the city intends to transform itself into the global epicenter of what they call a "modern industrial system."

This isn't about neural networks writing poetry, but about the real sector that will now operate on algorithmic steroids and satellite connectivity. Context matters more than the numbers themselves. Shanghai has long since outgrown its status as a simple financial hub.

Under constant pressure from the West and restrictions on chip exports, Chinese leadership is betting on vertical integration. When the mayor speaks of support for integrated circuits and biopharmaceuticals, he means creating supply chains that will be impossible to cut from the outside. But the most interesting part lies in the new terms now officially enshrined in this year's development plans.

Shanghai is taking a course toward a "low-altitude economy" and satellite internet. What is a low-altitude economy? Picture the sky above a megacity filled not only with smog but with thousands of autonomous drones and air taxis.

This is a huge logistics and passenger transport market that requires not only the vehicles themselves but an extraordinarily complex AI-based air traffic management system. Shanghai plans to become the first city where the concept of "smart skies" becomes everyday reality. In parallel, the city is investing in satellite internet, clearly trying to create a viable alternative to Starlink.

This is critically important for managing those very drones and ensuring connectivity anywhere over the ocean, which smoothly leads us to another priority—the maritime economy. Interestingly, the authorities haven't forgotten the "old guard." Rather than simply closing factories, Shanghai plans to implement digital intelligent technologies in steel production and petrochemistry.

This is an attempt to make traditional industry "green" and efficient through deep automation. In essence, the city is building a giant neural network where factories, vehicles, satellites, and ships are connected through a single digital loop. Artificial intelligence here acts not as a separate product but as the glue binding all these sectors into a single organism.

Special attention is paid to intelligent connected vehicles powered by new energy sources. Shanghai is already home to the world's largest electric vehicle manufacturing plants, but now the task is broader: to make them fully autonomous and integrated into urban infrastructure. This means that in the coming years we will see massive deployment of V2X technologies (vehicle-to-everything communication), where a car communicates with traffic lights, other vehicles, and even road surfaces in real time.

This requires enormous computational power, which the city also plans to increase by creating specialized digital industry clusters. The bottom line: Shanghai has stopped playing catch-up and started building the infrastructure of the future, which the West still discusses only in theory. Will the city be able to digest such ambitions in the face of global economic cooling?