How does "AI + Steel" empower the intelligent development of China's steel industry?
Currently, the Chinese steel industry is at a critical stage of transitioning from digitalization to intelligence. Industry experts have suggested that the new generation of artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to become a new engine driving the high-quality development of the Chinese steel industry.
Jiang Wei, Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee, Vice President, and Secretary-General of the China Iron and Steel Industry Association, emphasized at the "AI + Steel" technology launch conference held in Beijing on the 18th that the steel industry is an important basic industry in our country, with a large industrial scale, deep application accumulation, and an urgent need for high-quality development, making it the best practice field for the deep empowerment of the new generation of artificial intelligence.
Zhang Longqiang, Director of the Metallurgical Industry Information Standards Research Institute, said that the application prospects of artificial intelligence in the steel industry are broad, and positive progress has been made in production process optimization, quality control, and supply chain management. In the future, "AI + Steel" will have even broader development space. With the in-depth application of large model technology, it will further penetrate the "black box" of steel production processes, connect data silos, solve resource scheduling dilemmas, and achieve intelligent and refined management of the entire steel production process.
Wang Guodong, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, stated that the steel industry, as a large and complex process industry, has all processes as "black boxes," with a large amount of incomplete information, uncertainty, and problems in a dynamic environment, and a large amount of data within materials cannot be obtained in real-time, continuously, and online. Therefore, it is necessary to leverage the advantages of experts in the fields of steel materials and AI in our country, deeply integrate the newly developed AI technology with the real economy of the steel industry, fully utilize the rich big data of the steel industry, the theories and experiences of experts in the steel field, and the advanced generative artificial intelligence technology in the information field, implement a triadic cognitive methodology of "data-intensive - intelligent emergence - human-machine collaboration," establish a human-machine hybrid artificial intelligence body, promote human-machine collaboration, cross-border integration, co-creation and sharing, and empower the steel industry.
Guo Hai, Secretary of the Party Committee of Northeastern University, pointed out that the steel industry is the backbone of the national industry, AI is the innovation engine, and the deep integration of the two is the only way to achieve high-end, intelligent, and green development. Northeastern University was the first to propose the "human-machine hybrid intelligence" model to solve the "black box" of steel production, achieving high-fidelity online predictions for the entire process, and the technology has been implemented in multiple steel enterprises.
The "AI + Steel" large model of Northeastern University is based on an intelligent blending system using big data from before iron production, which can effectively reduce energy consumption per ton of iron, decrease carbon emissions, and predict the performance components of slag iron in advance, significantly improving furnace thermal stability and furnace tank activity.
Zhang Longqiang stated that the development of "AI + Steel" will promote the green and sustainable development of the steel industry, achieving the goals of energy conservation, emission reduction, and environmental protection. At the same time, the construction of an AI ecosystem across enterprises and industries will also become a trend, promoting deep cooperation and collaborative innovation between steel enterprises and upstream and downstream companies, research institutions, and technology service providers, driving the steel industry towards high-end, intelligent, and green development.
