The Rapid Development and Application of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly evolving and profoundly changing human production and lifestyle, showcasing its powerful technological capabilities and potential for empowerment. China is deeply implementing the “AI+” initiative, leading industrial innovation through technological advancements and promoting technological iteration through industrial upgrades, thereby enabling AI to empower various sectors.

The opinions outlined in the State Council’s document on the implementation of the “AI+” initiative, issued in 2025, clarify overall requirements, development goals, and key directions. The 14th Five-Year Plan emphasizes the comprehensive implementation of the “AI+” initiative. Experts have been invited to discuss how to unleash strong momentum through the “AI+” initiative.

AI’s Profound Impact on Innovation Paradigms

Why implement the “AI+” initiative? How can we grasp the development needs of the “AI+” initiative from deep implementation to comprehensive implementation?

Wang Xiaoming (Director of Industrial Technology Innovation Research Department, Chinese Academy of Sciences): AI is a crucial engine for developing new productive forces, profoundly changing innovation paradigms. The marginal effects of traditional factors such as labor and capital on GDP are diminishing. AI is considered a general-purpose technology on par with electricity and the internet, possessing strong penetration and empowerment effects. Implementing the “AI+” initiative is a significant measure to develop new productive forces, achieving exponential improvements in total factor productivity by reorganizing global resource elements and reconstructing industrial development paradigms.

AI is reshaping the global economic landscape and competitive dynamics, becoming a critical area in great power competition. Major economies view AI development as a significant strategy to enhance national competitiveness and maintain national security. In 2025, the U.S. plans to invest hundreds of billions of dollars through initiatives like the AI Action Plan to maintain its dominance in AI. Global AI competition has shifted from a singular focus on computational power and models to an ecosystem and application competition. China actively responds to intense international competition by deeply implementing the “AI+” initiative, leveraging its vast market and complete industrial system to seize the high ground in AI applications through scenario-driven approaches, thereby forcing breakthroughs in foundational chips and algorithms to mitigate risks of being “choked” by core technologies.

AI is also a crucial means to enhance public service capabilities and drive the modernization of social governance. As the largest developing country with over 1.4 billion people, China faces many complex social governance challenges. In public services, technologies such as intelligent agents enable seamless access to education, healthcare, and elderly care, significantly improving the quality of life for citizens. In social governance, AI shifts the logic from “experience-driven, reactive” to “computational support, proactive warning,” releasing grassroots governance vitality and providing a core foundation for building a refined and intelligent governance system, thus promoting the modernization of the national governance system and capabilities.

In 2017, the State Council issued the “New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan,” aiming to establish China’s AI development advantages. AI is defined as a “strategic technology leading the future,” with policies focusing on foundational theories, core algorithms (like computer vision and speech recognition), and high-end chip development.

In 2024, the “AI+” initiative was included in the “Government Work Report” for the first time. In 2025, the State Council issued the “Opinions on Deeply Implementing the ‘AI+’ Initiative.” Relevant policies emphasize not only AI technology itself but also how AI can empower industrial development. The construction of computational infrastructure is continuously improving, and the data element system is gradually being established, laying the foundation for the practical application of AI.

The 14th Five-Year Plan emphasizes the comprehensive implementation of the “AI+” initiative, strengthening the integration of AI with technological innovation, industrial development, cultural construction, public welfare, and social governance. In the future, the focus will not only be on expanding application scales but also on reshaping innovation paradigms. By leading changes in research paradigms and seizing high ground in industrial applications, deep changes in production methods and revolutionary leaps in productivity can be achieved.

AI comprehensively empowers various industries, demonstrating immense growth potential. In the realm of “AI+ scientific research,” AI acts as a “laboratory assistant,” shortening the material development and drug screening cycles from years to weeks. In the “AI+ industry” sector, AI is widely applied in product design, supply chain management, and intelligent inspection, enabling comprehensive analysis of various factors, assisting in demand forecasting and inventory dynamic optimization, thus enhancing supply chain resilience. Intelligent inspection technologies based on computer vision are applied in various inspection stages of vehicle manufacturing, achieving real-time identification of sub-millimeter defects on high-speed production lines, improving detection efficiency under complex conditions. In the “AI+ consumption” area, AI drives the growth of intelligent product and service consumption. On one hand, the implementation of AI large model technology leads to the elimination and upgrading of terminal products, initiating a new round of intelligent iterations for smartphones, computers, and home appliances. On the other hand, AI effectively addresses issues such as uneven distribution of resources in healthcare, education, and elderly care, providing intelligent services that meet consumers’ growing demands.

In the future, AI development will focus on three directions: First, AI for Science will accelerate technological innovation processes, changing research paradigms and driving original technology output in materials, energy, and biomedicine, providing the driving force for industrial development. Second, embodied intelligence will rapidly develop, transitioning from large language models to visual language action models and world models, further integrating into human production and life, obtaining real data in the physical world for self-iteration. By 2035, the number of humanoid robots in workplaces in China is expected to exceed 2 million. Third, the construction of high-quality datasets will be effectively promoted. With an application-oriented approach, China will continue to strengthen the construction of high-quality AI datasets, promote the lawful and compliant opening of public data, and explore data cost compensation and revenue sharing based on value contribution, creating a batch of data service providers and forming a healthy data industry ecosystem.

“AI+ Consumption” Activating New Momentum

The “AI+” initiative is not only a cutting-edge direction for technological development but also relates to the real concerns of the public. How does AI, as a disruptive innovative technology, boost consumption?

Li Yongjian (Professor, School of Applied Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences): Consumption is a crucial engine for China’s economic growth, with final consumption expenditure contributing 52% to economic growth by 2025. As the consumption market continues to expand, residents’ consumption demands exhibit diverse characteristics such as quality, personalization, scenario-based, and convenience, facing structural challenges like supply-demand mismatches, homogenized experiences, and weakened growth momentum. The new round of technological revolution represented by AI, with its powerful data processing, deep learning, and intelligent decision-making capabilities, provides new pathways to address pain points in the consumption sector and activate new consumption momentum.

AI expands consumption boundaries through scenario innovation, continuously driving consumption growth in areas such as food, clothing, housing, transportation, social entertainment, and tourism. In the tourism sector, AI assistants can create customized travel plans based on consumer preferences, AI tour guides provide rich personalized explanations, and AR guide glasses offer immersive experiences, significantly enhancing the quality of tourism experiences. In shopping, AI shopping assistants analyze consumer preferences and make precise recommendations based on comprehensive data from the internet, making consumption decisions more rational; virtual fitting rooms utilize 3D modeling and intelligent matching to provide new shopping scenarios. In health, AI empowers health management platforms that integrate wearable devices and nutrition recommendations, facilitating comprehensive and precise health management for consumers while driving rapid growth in related industries such as outdoor sports and healthy eating.

AI stimulates consumption demand through product innovation, translating it into real growth. For example, as of the end of Q3 2025, the total number of registered smart wearable products in China reached 181,000, a growth of over 90% compared to September 2020, with an annual growth rate of nearly 14%. Among these, the variety of smartwatches reached 29,000, with an annual growth rate of 46.8%. Additionally, wearable devices drive related consumption, such as Quark AI glasses supporting payment scenarios like “look and pay,” significantly increasing consumer repurchase rates in supermarkets. The intelligent level of traditional household appliances continues to rise, with whole-home intelligent systems interconnecting various appliances through sensors and communication modules, automatically adjusting room temperature and lighting based on user habits, optimizing household energy use in conjunction with power loads. The transition of traditional appliances to smart appliances has led to significant sales growth for products like cooking robots and window-cleaning robots, with the market size of cooking robots in China expected to reach 3.17 billion yuan by 2024 and exceed 11.7 billion yuan by 2030. According to data from AVC, the retail market share of color TVs with built-in AI large models rapidly penetrated, with online market retail share increasing from 0.8% in January to 42.1% in June, and offline market retail share increasing from 1.8% to 28.3%. In the future, there is significant growth potential for smart products catering to the elderly. Humanoid robots, utilizing AI visual recognition, multimodal interaction, and autonomous decision-making algorithms, will penetrate all scenarios from basic household chores to emotional companionship. By the end of 2025, the population aged 60 and above in China is expected to account for 23% of the total population, leading to explosive growth in demand for humanoid robots.

AI creatively utilizes data elements to drive innovation in consumption formats. As consumer demands become increasingly personalized and diversified, supply-demand mismatches are a significant reason for weak consumption. By leveraging AI technology, it is possible to effectively collect and analyze data related to consumer demands, capturing dynamic market changes and guiding enterprises to adjust supply strategies in a timely manner. Through flexible production and intelligent supply chains, consumer needs can be met while facilitating consumer participation in design and marketing. In this process, consumption formats continue to innovate, and consumer demands are better satisfied. For example, AI can dynamically predict existing consumer demands, enabling production forecasting. The deep integration of AI and big data allows for precise predictions of social demands, enabling enterprises to effectively plan production and reduce inventory across various stages. New consumption models like C2M (consumer-to-manufacturer) are emerging, releasing potential consumer demands. By aggregating consumer needs through big data, AI is applied in product development, design, production, and marketing processes to meet personalized consumer demands through customized production.

AI promotes innovation in consumption formats and stimulates consumption growth by fully embedding itself in transaction processes. For instance, the Qianwen APP connects with platforms like Taobao, Alipay, and Gaode to optimize consumption processes and achieve intelligent shopping. In February of this year, Qianwen’s “30 Billion Big Free Order” event showed that AI completed over 120 million orders in six days. Additionally, AI hosts can conduct uninterrupted live broadcasts 24/7, adjusting dialogue content based on interactive information and automatically optimizing discount information based on real-time order volumes and user interactions, significantly enhancing conversion efficiency.

In 2025, the State Council issued the “Opinions on Deeply Implementing the ‘AI+’ Initiative,” deploying measures to enhance consumption quality through “AI+” by proposing to “expand new service consumption scenarios” and “cultivate new product consumption formats,” emphasizing the “vigorous development of new-generation intelligent terminals such as smart connected vehicles, AI smartphones and computers, intelligent robots, smart homes, and smart wearables.” Following the global wave of technological revolution, the integration of AI with various industries will inject continuous new momentum into China’s consumption growth.

“AI+ Manufacturing” Promoting New Industrialization

What is the significance of issuing the “Implementation Opinions on ‘AI+ Manufacturing’ Special Action? How does the mutual empowerment of AI and manufacturing solve prominent problems?

Wang Gaoxiang (Deputy Director of the New Industrialization Research Institute, China Electronics and Information Industry Development Research Institute): AI is a strategic technology leading a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation, exhibiting a strong spillover effect akin to a “leading goose” effect. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission, and other eight departments issued the “Implementation Opinions on ‘AI+ Manufacturing’ Special Action,” which holds significant strategic importance for accelerating the formation of new productive forces and promoting new industrialization.

From a technological evolution perspective, AI is transitioning from a “tool” to a “factor.” Unlike previous information and automation technologies that only replaced labor in specific segments, the new generation of AI, represented by large models, embodied intelligence, and industrial intelligent agents, possesses a complete capability loop of perception, cognition, decision-making, and execution, capable of spanning the entire chain from research and design to production, supply chain management, and after-sales service. Systematically promoting “AI+ manufacturing” at this technological inflection point helps convert technological breakthrough potential into industrial upgrade momentum, accelerating the reorganization of production factors, reconstruction of production processes, and reshaping of business models.

From an industrial competition perspective, China’s manufacturing sector urgently needs to open new competitive avenues through intelligence. On one hand, rising costs of labor, land, and energy have gradually weakened traditional low-cost competitive advantages; on the other hand, the rise of anti-globalization sentiments and intensified technological decoupling have further increased export costs and supply chain security risks. AI technology can effectively reduce overall costs through factor substitution, improve product quality through process optimization, and enhance supply chain control through data connectivity, paving a new path for high-quality development in manufacturing through “intelligent cost reduction, intelligent quality enhancement, and intelligent efficiency increase.”

From a global competition perspective, major manufacturing countries are integrating AI with manufacturing and elevating it to a national strategy, seizing high ground in a new round of industrial competition. China’s manufacturing sector has advantages in a complete industrial system and leading scale, providing vast data resources and application scenarios for AI development. Promoting the implementation of the “AI+ manufacturing” special action helps convert unique advantages into a first-mover advantage for AI’s application in manufacturing, gaining strategic initiative in global intelligent manufacturing competition.

Practical evidence shows that the mutual empowerment of AI and manufacturing helps systematically address prominent challenges in the transformation of the manufacturing sector.

It has solved the “invisibility” problem. The deep integration of AI and manufacturing can effectively address the long-standing challenges faced by traditional manufacturing, such as the lack of transparency in production processes, difficulty in sensing equipment status, and reliance on human eyes for quality defects, helping enterprises achieve real-time perception and precise control throughout the production process. According to IDC’s survey of Chinese industrial enterprises in 2025, the proportion of enterprises applying large models and intelligent agents increased from 9.6% in 2024 to 47.5% in 2025. Over 80% of China’s manufacturing enterprises have achieved digital management, with the application rate of industrial internet platforms rising to 45.6%, and the rate of numerical control in key processes reaching 68.6%.

It has solved the “poor performance” problem. In the past, many high-precision and high-complexity manufacturing processes relied heavily on the experience of skilled workers, limiting product yield rates to human limits. Intelligent factories leverage AI through machine vision, intelligent quality inspection, and dynamic optimization of process parameters, shifting quality control from post-production sampling to online monitoring. As of January this year, over 35,000 basic-level, more than 8,200 advanced-level, and over 500 excellent-level intelligent factories have been established in China, cultivating 15 leading intelligent factories. AI has penetrated over 70% of business scenarios in leading intelligent factories, accumulating over 6,000 vertical domain models. Currently, China has 101 “lighthouse factories,” ranking first globally.

It has solved the “inability to transform” problem. For a long time, small and medium-sized enterprises faced constraints in funding and technical capabilities, encountering difficulties in digital and intelligent transformation, often wanting to transform but lacking the courage or knowledge to do so. Vertical industrial internet platforms and industry large models led by leading enterprises provide small and medium-sized enterprises with ready-to-use intelligent solutions. The rich application scenarios in manufacturing and vast industrial data also provide irreplaceable training resources for AI’s evolution from general large models to industry-specific models, forming a virtuous cycle of “application driving technology, technology feeding back into industry.” In recent years, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has selected three batches of 101 pilot cities for the digital transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises, supporting over 40,000 small and medium-sized enterprises in their digital upgrades.

However, it is important to recognize that compared to the requirements for high-quality development, there are still prominent issues in “AI+ manufacturing.” For example, the depth and breadth of integration are relatively low, with slow penetration in pilot verification and production manufacturing, facing bottlenecks such as insufficient technological maturity, poor scene adaptability, and low standardization. The value of industrial data elements remains to be activated, with 76% of manufacturing enterprises experiencing insufficient data value extraction, and about 44% of manufacturing data being effectively utilized, but only 4% of high-quality data meeting large model training requirements. There are significant shortcomings in foundational algorithms and industrial software, with inadequate supply capabilities for industrial-grade chips and high-end sensors.

To seize the new wave of technological revolution, promoting the deeper integration of AI and manufacturing across a wider range and at a deeper level, effectively converting technological breakthrough potential into powerful momentum for advancing new industrialization, requires multi-dimensional collaborative efforts. First, strengthen demonstration guidance to lead by example. Focus on the most urgent and valuable segments of the manufacturing sector to achieve breakthroughs, forming typical models and accelerating the cultivation of a batch of intelligent native enterprises in manufacturing. Second, strengthen the foundation of industrial data, focusing on data collection, utilization, and accelerating the construction of high-quality industry datasets, while cultivating and expanding a batch of data consulting and data annotation entities. Third, enhance investment in foundational technologies, solidifying the foundations of computational power, algorithms, and data, and promoting key technological breakthroughs in high-end chips, high-performance sensors, industrial mother machines, and high-end instruments.