The Mechanism, Existing Challenges, and Optimization Pathways of Artificial Intelligence in Driving High-Quality Development of the Digital Economy

The Mechanism, Existing Challenges, and Optimization Pathways of Artificial Intelligence in Driving High-Quality Development of the Digital Economy

The digital economy has become a core pillar of China’s national economic growth, and promoting its high-quality development is crucial for building a modern industrial system and achieving economic transformation and upgrading. As a new generation of general-purpose digital technology, artificial intelligence (AI) offers capabilities such as perception, computation, decision-making, and optimization, which allow it to permeate the entire chain of production, circulation, and social governance. It reshapes the operational logic of the digital economy and serves as the key driving force in unlocking its potential and overcoming the challenges of extensive growth. Although China’s digital economy continues to expand in scale, significant shortcomings remain in the deep integration between AI and the digital industry. This paper adopts a literature review approach to analyze the internal mechanisms through which AI empowers high-quality development of the digital economy from three dimensions: production, factor circulation, and digital governance. It systematically identifies current bottlenecks and underlying causes in the integration process and proposes targeted optimization pathways across four dimensions: core technology breakthroughs, marketization of data elements, tiered industry empowerment, and institutional system improvement. The findings offer theoretical guidance for local governments to advance the deep integration of AI with the digital economy and formulate supportive policies for the digital sector, helping the digital economy shift from a sole focus on scale expansion toward innovative, coordinated, green, and inclusive high-quality development.