Attendees at the 2026 World AI Conference (WAIC) and High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance have lauded the keynote speech delivered by Chinese President Xi Jinping for promoting open, shared and benevolent global AI development.
The highly anticipated event, which runs from Friday to Monday, brings together official representatives, business leaders, scholars and researchers from more than 100 countries and international organizations.
International experts said Xi's speech has instilled strong confidence in global cooperation on artificial intelligence with China and greatly supported the pace of domestic research and development in artificial intelligence.
"China is a huge country is a really growing economy, and we can see in the exhibition, very (fast-)developing AI infrastructure. So, hopefully we can see, I think it's good collaboration, because we can learn from each other, from Kazakhstan. I know our president met the big tech companies, with China's big companies, and we have a lot of collaboration with Chinese companies, and it's going to be a huge developing for our economy and for our big tech companies. And we will see how is going to go through for that, and hopefully we will see the bright future in in this Asia region," said Nurali Nazikov, head of the international cooperation department at the National Center of Geodesy and Spatial Information of Kazakhstan.
The president's message also boosted the spirits of Chinese industry insiders, who see a bright future for the domestic AI sector.
"President Xi's speech greatly inspired us and strengthened our confidence in further investing in our self-developed video big data models and world models. We will adhere to the technological roadmap of self-reliance and self-improvement to create high-quality technologies and products with global influence that serve the global market. At the same time, we believe that we also need more responsible AI model developers who will promote technology for good and ensure that our models benefit all mankind," said Jaden Xie, co-founder and president of PixVerse, a Chinese AI video generation platform.
Global attendees praise China's AI development for good purposes, shared benefits
Nobel laureate Omar Yaghi on Friday lauded China's clear vision for AI development and stressed the need for countries worldwide to actively embrace the technology to maximize its benefits for humanity.
Yaghi, who won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, attended the opening ceremony of the 2026 World AI Conference and High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance in Shanghai on Friday. He told China Media Group (CMG) that the most impressive part of Chinese President Xi Jinping's speech was the message that AI should benefit the world.
"Well, I think the speech laid out exactly what is the vision for AI in China. China is advancing very rapidly on many fronts and AI is advancing rapidly. And I think it needs us to be conscious of how it's going to evolve and how it's going to impact society, science at large, also globally, both for the good and also to be conscious of the fact that it may be used for negative things as well. So I think the speech laid out very nicely how these two things can be balanced without stifling creativity and science," Yaghi said.
For Yaghi, his key message to share at this forum is that more fields should embrace AI.
"Well, my key message is that AI is developing very quickly. So we need in different disciplines to embrace it, so that the more we embrace it, the more we engage with it, the better the models are going to get, and the more service our discipline and to humanity we will do. So I'm getting a lot of that here in this conference," he said.
In commenting on the signing ceremony for the World AI Cooperation Organization agreement held Thursday, Yaghi said he understands its importance and stressed that scientific knowledge must be shared globally.
"I really love that. I love the fact that 29 countries have similar thinking on bringing together their views on AI and how to deal with AI and how to deal with this rapid evolution of AI. So that instead of few scientists in few countries solving the world's problems, more scientists in more countries would be solving the world problems. That's really what this agreement is about with 29 countries," he said.
The four-day 2026 World AI Conference and High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance has brought together official representatives, business leaders, scholars and researchers from more than 100 countries and international organizations.
Nobel laureate urges global AI embrace to benefit humanity
