On February 23, Huang Qiang, Deputy Secretary of the CPC Sichuan Provincial Committee and Governor of the People's Government of Sichuan Province, presided over a special meeting to discuss the development of artificial intelligence and robot industry. He stressed that we should resolutely apply the spirit of the Central Economic Work Conference, conscientiously implement the decisions and deployments of the CPC Sichuan Provincial Committee on promoting new industrialization, strengthen our sense of responsibility, systematically plan and vigorously promote the development of AI and robot industry, strive to seize opportunities in the new segment, accelerate the formation of new productive forces, better empower the high-quality development of the whole province, and contribute more to achieving the country's self-reliance in high-level science and technology.

At the meeting, representatives of 12 robot or AI enterprises, including Chengdu Humanoid Robot Innovation Center (in preparation) and Chengdu Fotor Technology Co., Ltd., delivered speeches to introduce the development trend of the industry, the development of enterprises, and challenges they face, and gave insights into how Sichuan should accelerate the development of related industries. Huang Qiang listened carefully, took notes, and interjected from time to time for in-depth exchanges and discussions with attendees. After hearing the speeches, Huang Qiang pointed out that AI and robots are strategic technologies and iconic products that lead a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation. As a province with great strength in economy, science, education and military industry, Sichuan shoulders the special strategic mission entrusted by the CPC Central Committee. In recent years, we have made some progress in AI and robots. However, compared with advanced regions, there are still shortcomings such as small overall industrial scale, lack of leading enterprises and high-end talents, and insufficient mastery of core technologies in key fields. AI development is advancing by leaps and bounds, and opportunities are fleeting. If we fail to seize them, we may miss a round of development or even fall behind. We must earnestly enhance our sense of responsibility and urgency to serve the country, take quick action without waiting or relying on others, make targeted and sustained efforts, and accelerate the cultivation of new economic drivers for the development of new productive forces.

Huang Qiang stressed that the greatest efforts should be made to precisely support industrial development. We should use unconventional thinking and take unconventional measures to integrate cities with sound development momentum, backbone enterprises and innovation platforms, attract, cultivate and retain more leading enterprises and key talents, give full play to the advantages of rich application scenarios in the province, explore and create application benchmarking cases and demonstration scenarios, promote the coordinated development of software and hardware, concentrate strengths to fight the tough battle, and speed up the formation of first-mover advantages. We should vigorously encourage and embrace disruptive, cutting-edge and leading scientific and technological innovation. We should reinforce the principal position of enterprises in innovation, support leading enterprises to take the lead in establishing innovation consortia, highlight original innovation, intensify research to achieve breakthroughs in core technologies in key fields, create an innovation and entrepreneurship environment that encourages innovation and tolerates failure, produce a number of major original results, advantageous technologies and iconic products, and accelerate the transformation of innovative results into real productivity and high-quality industrial development outcomes. We should use the spirit of reform to boldly break through institutional obstacles through mechanism innovation. We should push ahead with in-depth mechanism reform and innovation starting from minor things, explore the path of Sichuan to develop a new system for mobilizing the resources nationwide to achieve breakthroughs in core technologies in key fields, work to solve pain points and bottlenecks such as financing difficulties for enterprises by reforming the government-guided fund management system or through other means, promote the smooth convergence of various advanced and high-quality production factors, stimulate market vitality with greater advancement of the government, form new production relations that adapt to new productive forces, and foster a strong synergy to accelerate development.

Member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Sichuan Provincial Committee and Executive Vice Governor of the People's Government of Sichuan Province Dong Weimin, Vice Governor of the People's Government of Sichuan Province Zheng Bei, and heads of relevant provincial departments attended the meeting.