BEIJING, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- Across China's steel industry, once noisy furnace floors are giving way to intelligent systems where control centers analyze vast streams of production data in real time, artificial intelligence (AI) adjusts furnace temperatures dynamically, and robots spot defects with greater accuracy.

For industry veterans, this transformation is striking, and experts say it signals how frontier technologies are breathing new life into traditional sectors.

"As a frontier technology in the digital era, AI is bringing new hope to breaking long-standing bottlenecks in the steel industry," said Zhang Longqiang, head of the China Metallurgical Information and Standardization Institute, adding that intelligent algorithms are already driving progress in process optimization, quality control and supply chain management.

Figures from the China Iron and Steel Association show that 95.1 percent of Chinese steel enterprises have incorporated digital transformation strategies into their overall development plans, 82.9 percent have established centralized intelligent control centers, and 63.4 percent have applied 3D visualization and simulation systems to build digital factories.

Steelmakers are also using AI to advance their green transition. HBIS Group's upgraded carbon-neutral digital platform -- designed as a multifunctional and multi-scenario intelligent system -- enables accurate energy consumption forecasting and can double the efficiency of carbon-allowance demand analysis.

Looking ahead, Wang Guodong, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said that the steel industry should accelerate the integration of industrial internet, big data and AI technologies; move from end-of-pipe treatment to source control and whole-process management featuring human-machine collaboration and autonomous, unmanned operations; and achieve coordinated progress in cutting carbon emissions, reducing pollution, expanding green development and sustaining growth.

From factory floors to farmlands and services hubs, China's "AI Plus" drive is expanding across the economy. Drones streamline logistics in Shenzhen, AI-powered robots help manage greenhouses in Shandong, and intelligent voice systems in Hefei serve users around the world. Together, these snapshots of China's AI landscape underscore the country's strengths in its rich data resources, complete industrial system and broad application scenarios.

The State Council recently unveiled a set of guidelines on advancing the "AI Plus" initiative, providing a systematic action plan to embed AI into various sectors and support high-quality social and economic development.

Experts say the initiative marks a new stage of the digital revolution. Zhong Xinlong, a researcher at the China Center for Information Industry Development, used a vivid analogy: If the last decade was about building an extensive information superhighway, the next decade will be about running countless fleets of intelligent agents with decision-making and collaborative capabilities on that highway.

The guidelines propose support for the construction of open-source AI communities, and for the pooling and opening of models, tools and datasets to be promoted, which will provide the key needs of technological innovation and will lower research and development barriers.

Yan Yijun, vice president of AI unicorn MiniMax, said this will offer a solid foundation for technology-driven enterprises to carry out research and development, providing development guidance and market space for the expansion of industry solutions and participation in the intelligent transformation of traditional industries, while also creating more business opportunities and accelerating global cooperation.

According to the National Development and Reform Commission, which is the country's top economic planner, the implementation of the "AI Plus" initiative will involve introducing supporting policies and accelerating the development of standards across different sectors and industries. This will promote major projects such as the development of AI vouchers, and foster demonstration cases by guiding AI model developers, research institutes and leading enterprises to form cross-disciplinary teams, while encouraging local governments and companies to explore new development models.

Launching the initiative is not only a key step to fostering new quality productive forces but also an inevitable requirement to drive the digital economy toward an intelligent economy and an intelligent society, said Huo Fupeng, director of the commission's innovation-driven development center.

As industry experts have noted, what truly transforms society is not technology itself but the depth and breadth of its integration into production and everyday life. As AI penetrates a wide range of industries in China, and as innovation thrives under sound institutional support, a systemic restructuring of the country's economic and social development is gaining pace. ■