Chinese President Xi Jinping demanded in-depth understanding of artificial intelligence (AI) on Wednesday, by calling the industry "an important driving force for the new round of scientific revolution."

Presiding over a group study session of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee on Wednesday, Xi, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, spoke of the need to strengthen leadership, make good plans, clearly define tasks and consolidate the foundation to promote deep integration of AI with economic and social developments.

The country's economy is undergoing a change - from "high speed growth" to "high quality growth, as Xi pointed out. The shift requires new-generation technologies like AI provide to serve as "kinetic energy."

Xi highlighted the significance of AI as technology set to lead the new round of technological and industrial revolution.

Accelerated by new theories and technologies, including mobile Internet, big data, super-computing, sensor network as well as brain science, AI is presenting new features of deep learning, cross-border integration, man-machine coordination, collective intelligence and autonomous control, which is casting great and far-reaching impact on the economic and social development and international political and economic pattern.

Speeding up the development of the new-generation AI technology is important for us in winning the initiative in sci-tech competition globally, and domestically, promoting a leaping development of science and technology, industrial upgrading and optimization and an overall improvement of the productivity, Xi added.  

He also called on innovation in AI and focus on core technologies, to achieve "transformative and disruptive breakthroughs" in the direction, theory, method, tool and system of AI, ensuring China's leading role in the theoretical research and crucial technologies of AI.

President Xi encouraged a problem-oriented approach to comprehensively enhance the capacity for sci-tech innovation in AI, and a demand-oriented approach to strengthen the development in the applications. 

He also stressed the importance of talent training.

"We should build multiform platforms, with greater determination and stronger measures, for training high-level personnel, and strengthen the efforts in training reserve personnel, so as to provide more adequate support for scientific and industrial development."