AI agents face trust issues in ‘high-risk’ industrial sectors: experts

SHENZHEN, China – May 17, 2026 – China’s ambitious drive to integrate artificial intelligence into its industrial sectors, bolstered by significant state support, is encountering caution from industry specialists. While the nation races to leverage AI for efficiency gains, particularly through advanced “agentic AI” systems, experts warn that critical “high-risk” domains like healthcare and aerospace may not be ready for the shift towards autonomous agents due to inherent trust issues and a lack of industrial-specific data during training.

The discussion emerged at the International Data Corporation (IDC) CIO Summit in Shenzhen on Friday, where industry leaders highlighted AI’s evolution from simple chatbots to agentic AI – sophisticated systems engineered to independently execute tasks within a workflow. This progression is widely hailed as a key driver of a “fourth industrial revolution.”

“Upper-layer software, which includes consumer-facing apps and internal management systems, will be entirely replaced by agents,”

said Liu Xiangyang, Chief Information Security Officer at Midea Group. He emphasized the transformative potential, noting that these agents are designed with the capability to comprehend business logic and execute complex workflows autonomously.

Du Yanze, a Senior Research Manager at IDC, further elaborated on the evolving value proposition of industrial AI. He underscored that “the core of the industrial AI value chain has shifted from how you build the software, to the industry knowledge inside it,” predicting that “90 per cent of an AI agent’s value will come from industrial expertise.” Du provided a compelling example of this efficiency, explaining how AI agents could dramatically reduce the time required to manually process a supply chain order from two hours to mere minutes, achieving this through automated data analysis, planning, risk recognition, and decision-making.

This accelerated adoption is a direct result of Beijing's “AI Plus” strategy, which mandates aggressive integration targets across manufacturing, agriculture, and services sectors: over 70 percent by 2027 and exceeding 90 percent by 2030. However, this national ambition is set against a backdrop where China's industrial software capabilities currently lag, particularly in advanced manufacturing. Sectors like electronic design automation (EDA) software for semiconductors remain heavily reliant on foreign technology, highlighting a significant hurdle in the nation's journey towards AI autonomy.