Hangzhou Mayor Zhang Hongming, chairman of Alibaba's Technology Steering Committee Wang Jian, and founder and CEO of Foxconn Technology Group Terry Gou jointly launch the Hangzhou City Brain project at the 2016 Computing Conference in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province on Oct. 13. (Photo/Alibaba Group)

The Hangzhou government launched a new project, titled "City Brain," with Alibaba Group and Foxconn Technology Group at the 2016 Computing Conference in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province on Oct. 13.

City Brain, an artificial intelligence hub, will use big data to help the city "think" and make decisions. It aims to build Hangzhou into a smart city with the ability to self-regulate and even interact with human beings.

"The core of City Brain will use the ET artificial intelligence technology of Ali cloud, which can conduct overall real-time analysis of the city, automatically deploy public resources and amend defects in urban operations," said Wang Jian, chairman of Alibaba's Technology Steering Committee.

The first step of the City Brain project is to collect data relating to infrastructure facilities including transportation, resources and water supply. From there, the partners will integrate data resources scattered around the city to navigate its "neural network."

Wang Jian, chairman of the Technology Steering Committee of Alibaba Group, introduces the City Brain project at the 2016 Computing Conference in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province on Oct. 13. (Photo/Alibaba Group)

According to Hua Xiansheng, a machine vision scientist at Ali Cloud, City Brain will be the only artificial intelligence system in the world that can achieve real-time analysis of city-wide videos. The transportation module has already been in use since September on Hangzhou's Shixin Road. Test data shows that, through the intelligent regulation of traffic lights, traffic flow on the street has improved 3 to 5 percent on average, and even up to 11 percent on some sections of the road.

"It's just the beginning," said Wang. "City Brain is an unprecedented … experiment of bringing artificial intelligence into city management."

The computing conference, held jointly by Hangzhou city government and Alibaba Group, is the largest domestic summit on cloud computing and big data. Its former name was Ali Cloud Developers Conference.