The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen on Thursday unveiled its eighth school — the School of Artificial Intelligence (SAI) — and pledged to develop it into an innovation hub for AI technologies.

The inauguration of the new school comes at a pivotal moment, as the Chinese pioneering AI application DeepSeek captures the global spotlight.

“The primary motivation behind establishing the SAI is to keep pace with the global trends and advancements in the field of AI,” CUHK-Shenzhen President Xu Yangsheng said at the inauguration ceremony.

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The school plans to enroll students in September, offering undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral programs that cover machine learning, deep learning, robotics, and other core AI studies.

Xu emphasized that the goals are to propel academic advancements in AI, ensure the university evolves in sync with cutting-edge AI technologies, and nurture top-tier AI talent.

Since its establishment in 2014, the university has strategically positioned artificial intelligence (AI) as a key focus. In 2024, 40 of its researchers were selected for Stanford University’s “World’s Top 2 percent Scientists List”.

Fan Jianqing, a globally recognized AI expert and professor of statistics and machine learning at Princeton University, was appointed the academic dean of the new school.

“We have assembled a faculty team of 55 experts, including six domestic and international academicians in the fields of large language models, robotics, computational architecture, and other key AI technologies,” Fan said.

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He believes the world is on the brink of an AI revolution. “AI large language models are merely tests of concepts; the possibilities of AI for scientific discoveries and technological innovations are far beyond our imagination,” he said.

He also acknowledged the challenge posed by diverse societal needs, alongside AI security and ethics — issues that the new school is also committed to addressing as part of its mission.

Meanwhile, the university launched the Surgical Minimally-invasive and Artificial Intelligent Robotic Training Center on the same day.