Editor's note: Shandong province, a coastal powerhouse in eastern China, is charting a dynamic course towards fostering new quality productive forces, driving economic growth and sustainable development. Shandong's approach to developing new quality productive forces serves as a model for sustainable economic growth and environmental stewardship. China Daily is publishing a series of stories to showcase Shandong's unwavering commitment to innovation, transformation, and sustainable growth.

Qingdao regards technological innovation as key to developing new quality productive forces. [Photo/WeChat account: opinionline]

In recent years, Qingdao has regarded technological innovation as key to developing new quality productive forces.

Currently, the city is home to 239 enterprise technology centers and 129 engineering research centers at the provincial-level and above. Eighty-five percent of large-scale industrial enterprises operate research and development (R&D) institutions, and the city's R&D investment has increased by 12.8 percent year-on-year. Qingdao has been ranked among the top 10 National Innovative Cities for three consecutive years and has risen 11 places to 23rd in the global top 100 science and technology cluster rankings.

"Since the end of 2022, the demand for computing power among Qingdao enterprises has shown a rapid upward trend," said Sun Xiaoxiao, chief operating officer of the Qingdao Artificial Intelligence Computing Center, which is located in Laoshan district, East China's Qingdao. The center is the first artificial intelligence computing center in Shandong.

According to Sun, the computing center has collaborated with more than 50 enterprises, including Hisense and CRRC Qingdao Sifang, to provide computing power support in various fields such as smart oceans and intelligent manufacturing, and has incubated over 100 scenario-based solutions.

The application of AI in Qingdao has also empowered the high-quality development of its enterprises.

Zhu Chunbo, deputy general manager of Hisense Video Technology Research Center, Hisense has built a strong foundation of AI capabilities based on its independently-developed computing power, algorithms, and cloud infrastructure. Its Xinghai large language model, trained with massive amounts of data, has achieved natural conversation and intelligent content creation.

Zhu stated that Hisense, based on large-scale models, has changed the television experience, creating intelligent applications for six major scenarios to meet diverse user needs. Currently, Hisense has developed 20 leading AI technologies, which will be implemented in new products to promote high-quality development of AI in televisions.