In September this year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Implementation Plan for the "Artificial Intelligence + Software" Special Action" (hereinafter referred to as the "Implementation Plan"), proposing measures such as optimizing the intelligent programming tool chain, accelerating the intelligent upgrading of software products, and accelerating the integration and application of artificial intelligence technology in the software and information technology service industries.
The rapid development of AI (artificial intelligence) technology is profoundly changing the production methods, product forms and service models of software. It also poses a new question to the software industry: When AI becomes more and more capable of writing code and the programming threshold continues to decrease, how does the software industry rely on to win competition?
In the past, turning an idea into a software product had to go through multiple processes such as requirements analysis, program writing, testing and modification, etc., which consumed a lot of manpower and time. Nowadays, if you tell AI your requirements, it can generate code, find errors, and even coordinate the completion of some development tasks. According to media reports, a software development company in Chongqing asked three AI agents to take on the work of product manager, project manager and technical manager respectively, and the engineer became the "supervisor" responsible for scheduling and checking. In the code writing process, the coverage of AI tools has increased significantly, and some companies have even achieved full employee coverage.
In terms of product form, most software in the past passively executed instructions, but now some intelligent software can understand intentions and complete tasks independently; the service model has changed from delivering a set of fixed-function programs to continuously providing intelligent applications. Data shows that China's enterprise-level AI intelligent body market has reached 21.2 billion yuan in 2025, is expected to increase to 44.9 billion yuan in 2026, and is expected to exceed 332 billion yuan in 2029, with a compound annual growth rate of as high as 107%. The "Implementation Plan" makes arrangements from aspects such as promoting the transformation of software production, accelerating the intelligent upgrade of software products, and cultivating new forms of intelligent software, focusing on this series of new changes and new challenges.
While artificial intelligence technology lowers the threshold for software production, it also makes the value of industry knowledge and professional experience more prominent. Artificial intelligence can help developers write programs faster, but understanding the industry and needs cannot be achieved overnight.
Taking production scheduling software in the manufacturing field as an example, how to connect different processes, under what circumstances equipment needs to be shut down, and how to balance delivery progress and energy consumption all require an in-depth understanding of the production scenario. In the first eight months of this year, my country's software business revenue reached 10.28 trillion yuan; the added value of my country's manufacturing industry has ranked first in the world for 16 consecutive years. The vast software application market provides abundant demand for new software, and the complete manufacturing system has accumulated a large amount of production data, engineering methods and industry knowledge. The "Implementation Plan" proposes to support qualified industrial enterprises to join forces with software enterprises to encapsulate industrial experience, process parameters and other knowledge into reusable model libraries and industrial components to develop intelligent industrial software for the industry. By integrating professional experience into algorithms and software products with the help of artificial intelligence technology, so that software can truly understand the production process and adapt to complex working conditions, the advantages of my country's physical industry are expected to be further transformed into the advantages of the software industry.
Seizing new opportunities also requires new technologies and real skills to achieve each other.
Software development has accelerated, but quality and reliability requirements have not decreased. When a piece of code generated by artificial intelligence is put into a complex project, whether it can run stably for a long time, whether it can cope with abnormal situations, and whether it can ensure data security all need to be tested repeatedly.
It should be clearly understood that "artificial intelligence + software" has not changed the underlying logic of software development. Physical principles and mathematical methods are still issues that developers need to continue to delve into. The core of solving specific engineering problems requires long-term research and accumulation. Extremely high accuracy requirements require unconventional code design and verification of massive industrial scenarios. Artificial intelligence can empower software development, but it cannot replace the thinking of scientists and engineers.
We must not only make good use of artificial intelligence and accelerate the pace of intelligent software upgrades, but also continue to strengthen core algorithms, infrastructure and other technical research. Promote in-depth cooperation between software companies and industry users to allow products to be repeatedly polished in real scenarios; strengthen the construction of open source communities and promote technology sharing and collaborative innovation. Particular attention should be paid to quality and safety, and code review and risk detection should be included throughout the entire development process.
Sorting out the historical context of the software industry, from personal computers to mobile Internet, every technological change has given birth to new products and new companies, and has also rewritten the industrial competition landscape. Today, artificial intelligence has opened a new door. By transforming the huge industrial scale into excellent technical strength and transforming rich application scenarios into software products, China's software industry is expected to win greater development space in the new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation.
