Chinese tech leaders and industry insiders are championing artificial intelligence as the next transformative force for the country's internet sector, citing its potential to redefine industries and boost future economic growth, at the ongoing 2024 World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province.

Their comments came as China's digital economy has leapfrogged to become the world's second-largest after three decades of development, although the country's internet sector now faces mounting pressure to find fresh growth drivers amid rising global economic uncertainties.

Wu Hequan, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said: "China's internet sector must find its position in the new era, in order to really transform and be digitalized to drive high-quality economic development. AI, without a doubt, holds the key to this evolution."

Noting that China achieved full access to the global internet in 1994, Wu said the country's internet sector has moved from networking, or connecting, to digitalizing different sectors, and now it is witnessing a new wave of development driven by AI.

"The emergence of AI large models has not only revitalized the traditional internet sector, but also spawned numerous new business models and empowered many consumption and industrial applications," he said.

As a deep participant in every phase of China's internet development, Lei Jun, founder and CEO of Chinese tech giant Xiaomi, said the company sincerely feels that the country has been a "fertile ground" for continuous technological innovation in the internet industry.

For the next phase of China's internet development, he said that AI should be "deeply integrated into various sectors, become practical, and serve the public good".

This is also why the Beijing-based company began its "all-in-AI" strategy in 2016, and expanded its business from smartphones and consumer electronics to smart manufacturing, Lei added.

Qi Xiangdong, chairman of cybersecurity company Qi-Anxin Technology Group, likened the current momentum of AI to "blowing the trumpet" as a rallying call.

"AI will dominate the internet sector over the next five to 10 years, and is expected to transform every niche sector. This has already been proved by both social and industrial enthusiasm for AI," he said.

However, Qi warned that as AI technologies challenge traditional defenses, security risks loom large. He called for AI-driven solutions to tackle these risks, improve response efficiency and increase investment in cybersecurity talent and industries.

"Once AI development starts, it doesn't stop, but safety must be the foundation," he said, calling for a balance between innovation and protection while developing the internet sector.

Amid this new wave of internet development, almost all leading Chinese tech companies have invested in AI large models, a key technology that can recognize and generate texts, among other tasks.

According to a report published by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, China accounted for 36 percent of the 1,328 AI large models created globally. The United States has the largest share at 44 percent.

Zhou Hongyi, founder of Beijing-based internet security software provider and search company 360 Security Group, said that to stay ahead in future AI-driven internet development, Chinese companies don't need to follow their US counterparts in training vast data and scaling up the large models to be massive.

"Chinese internet companies can train AI large models tailored to specific industries using vertical data, which would better suit China's development needs and make AI large models more accessible and practical," he said.