Artificial intelligence may be the next breakthrough point for China's economy, driving China to lead the world

Scientific and technological progress is the engine of economic prosperity. From the application of mobile Internet since 2010 to the current trend of electric vehicles, China has been outstanding in technological innovation in recent decades, providing a strong impetus for China's economic growth. So what could be the next breakthrough point for China's technological development? I think the answer is likely to be artificial intelligence technology, which will bring greater prosperity to the Chinese economy or drive China to lead the world. The specific reasons are as follows.

Firstly, China's manufacturing advantage will help establish its competitive advantage in the era of intelligence.

Firstly, manufacturing intelligence must be achieved on the basis of existing manufacturing industries and cannot appear out of thin air. The strong manufacturing foundation in China provides a wide range of application scenarios for intelligence. If the manufacturing industry is hollow, intelligence in manufacturing can only be like cooking without rice. Secondly, the intelligence of manufacturing industry is based on manufacturing automation. In recent years, there has been a rapid wave of automation in Chinese manufacturing, with the most representative being the soaring usage rate of industrial robots. In 2013, China's total sales of industrial robots surpassed Japan for the first time, becoming the world's largest industrial robot market. In 2022, China's annual installation of robots accounted for 52% of the world's total. Not only does China lead in total quantity, but its utilization rate of manufacturing robots also ranks among the top in the world. In 2022, the density of manufacturing robots reached 392 units per 10000 workers. Finally, after achieving automation in the manufacturing industry, there is a need for the intelligence of other infrastructure. Such as logistics systems with real-time data transmission, online payment and shopping systems. These modern infrastructures have already been widely popularized in China, but are still in the construction stage in some Western countries.

The above gap has brought about differences in intelligent manufacturing between the East and the West. Around 2014, Germany and the United States set off a trend of industrial intelligence. Germany called it Industry 4.0, and the United States called it Industrial Internet. We have consulted relevant individuals in Germany, who believe that in a mother machine manufacturing powerhouse like Germany, Industry 4.0 serves as a bridge between production equipment suppliers and equipment users. If there are problems in the production process, under the conditions of Industry 4.0, it is only necessary to observe the production data, use the data to adjust the production procedures and processes, and complete the supply and demand cooperation between equipment suppliers and product manufacturers.

In China, Industry 4.0 is defined as the intelligence of the entire process, which simply means that customers place orders online, factories allocate equipment according to the orders, produce products, and cover the entire process of the equipment, achieving real-time response intelligence.

Therefore, behind the differences between China's smart industry, Germany's Industry 4.0 and the United States' industrial Internet is the difference between manufacturing details and intelligent infrastructure. Jack Ma has made it clear that Germany's Industry 4.0 has nothing to do with China. Germany's Industry 4.0 is actually a large-scale assembly industry, while China's smart manufacturing is a mixture of manufacturing intelligence and Internet plus.

So with the arrival of the intelligent era represented by machine vision, large-scale model computing and other technologies, while China's manufacturing energy efficiency has greatly improved, it will further establish the advantages of China's manufacturing industry.

Secondly, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, in the first three quarters, the added value of the service industry accounted for 55.1% of GDP and contributed 63.0% to economic growth. Therefore, in some aspects, the service industry can be said to be a more important industry than the manufacturing industry.

China's rich application scenarios and efficient incentive policies, coupled with consumers' willingness to try new things, have led to the widespread application of artificial intelligence in the Chinese service industry, thereby gaining a first mover advantage. There are also certain differences between the East and the West in this regard, with the United States and Europe delaying the application of artificial intelligence in daily life, or the service industry, due to internal disagreements. However, there are fewer restrictions on the application of artificial intelligence in daily life in China, and innovation in the application of artificial intelligence often appears first in these fields, making the application scenarios of artificial intelligence in China more diverse. In addition to the previous generation of intelligent applications such as mobile payments, China also leads in a large number of applications based on video IoT technology. Video IoT technology is the underlying support for artificial intelligence applications. With the deepening implementation of policies such as digital society, digital government, and digital economy in China, video IoT capabilities have been widely applied in various fields such as public safety, transportation, municipal governance, teaching, and healthcare, creating a huge application market. The market demand and application experience have driven the progress of related technologies, enabling Chinese enterprises to achieve good technological reserves.

The current video standards in the West are only for the video encoding and decoding of radio and television and the Internet, and only serve to watch video, and do not cover the IoT application of video information transmission. However, China has launched a technical standard specifically for video IoT. The importance of technical standards in the construction of technological ecosystems and other aspects does not need to be reiterated. In addition to video IoT, AI will usher in major industrial opportunities in other application scenarios such as consumption, the Internet, finance, the meta universe and digital twins, driven by the three core elements of data, computing power and algorithms.

Secondly, it is estimated that by around 2035, the elderly population aged 60 and above in China will exceed 400 million, ushering in a wave of silver haired economy. The aging population has a strong demand for digitalization of home care and the entry of humanoid robots into households. The intelligence of elderly care will also generate huge market demand, and China may have the world's largest single market in this field. Based on past experience, a world-class market may give rise to world-class technology and enterprises.

With the growth of family income, changes in elderly care concepts, and changes in the supply and demand situation of nursing homes, home-based elderly care that can provide more family comfort may become the mainstream way of elderly care. It is expected that the new elderly care model will put forward personalized demands for artificial intelligence based on family scenarios. Specifically, due to the uneven level of medical care in China and the need to improve the level of primary healthcare, new demands for elderly care may drive the rapid development of home healthcare AI applications and progress in basic data services. Advanced methods such as intelligent consultation, remote diagnosis and treatment, and intelligent image recognition will be widely applied in households.

In addition, the elderly's home life will generate a huge demand for humanoid robots. China has made significant progress in robot hardware technology in recent years, and key components such as servos and controllers have gained certain competitiveness. But the difficulty of using humanoid robots lies in safety. Ultimately, humanoid robots are intelligent terminals that heavily rely on machine vision for remote control. How to ensure family and personal privacy is a challenge.

Thirdly, the rich application scenarios and huge market of artificial intelligence will in turn drive the progress of other key technologies in China. Advanced technology is certainly important, but a sufficiently large market size is also crucial for the development of an industry. China's automotive chips have made breakthrough progress thanks to the intelligent application of the local automotive market. Previously, automobile chips had always been the exclusive domain of international giants. With the rise of domestic electric vehicles, cars began to be defined by the use habits of countrymen people. A large number of domestic chips serving the intelligence gradually entered the whole vehicle, and gradually extended to the core components, promoting the cultivation of a number of local car track chip manufacturers.

The demand for automotive chips has significantly increased due to the integration of autonomous driving and intelligent vehicles. From the perspective of a single vehicle, traditional cars require about 400 chips, electric cars require about 1000 chips, and smart electric cars may even reach 1400 to 1500 chips or more. With the continuous introduction of more functions, the number of automotive chips may gradually increase. Automotive grade chips have become one of the three major application industries in the global semiconductor market, and the demand will reach more than twice the industry growth rate. We expect that by 2025, the usage of automotive chips in China will reach 11.6 billion, forming a trillion level industrial chain. It can be foreseen that Chinese chip companies will achieve brilliant results in this huge market. Automotive chips are just one industry that benefits from the development of artificial intelligence. As a universal technology, artificial intelligence will reshape all industries without discrimination. A large amount of technological innovation will be generated by artificial intelligence, driving enterprises to continuously achieve breakthroughs.

In the past decade, China has laid a solid foundation for the artificial intelligence economy and made significant contributions to the global development of artificial intelligence. The Stanford Artificial Intelligence Index evaluates the progress of global artificial intelligence in various indicators such as research and development, and ranks China as one of the top three countries in terms of AI vitality worldwide. McKinsey predicts that by 2030, China's intelligent transportation sector will bring over 380 billion US dollars in economic value; The digital and artificial intelligence transformation solutions of Chinese enterprises will create an economic value of 80 billion US dollars; In the manufacturing industry, artificial intelligence is driving Chinese companies to shift from manufacturing execution to manufacturing innovation, creating an economic value of $115 billion.

We have studied and summarized the characteristics of artificial intelligence, and found that at present, the main approach is to combine existing technology with artificial intelligence, with artificial intelligence only providing small or large "plastic surgery" for existing technology. In the future, with the maturity of artificial intelligence technology, it will be the combination of artificial intelligence and everything else. Artificial intelligence, as the foundation supporting technology, will completely reshape all fields and create a far more brilliant era of artificial intelligence than it is now. The unparalleled depth, breadth, and vitality of the Chinese market can provide the most abundant nourishment for the development of artificial intelligence, while the universality of artificial intelligence will also bring unexpected surprises to the resilient Chinese economy.