Exploring the 2026 Bund Conference: When AI Starts Working, a New Economy Is Taking Shape

"AI New Economy" has become a hot concept. What does it really look like? How is it related to ordinary enterprises and people?

From September 9th to 12th, the 2026 Inclusion · Outer Bank Conference, themed "Creating an AI New Economy," was held at the Huangpu Expo Park in Shanghai. Over 300 participating companies gathered in a 15,000 square meter technology exhibition area. After visiting the exhibition, one can have a direct impression: AI new economy is no longer just a concept, but is beginning to truly take place in business, industry, and everyone's daily life.

From the moment of entry, AI is already working: touch your phone to complete the entry verification and activate the exhibition AI assistant; upon entering the exhibition hall, robots start working in pharmacies, factories, and laundries, and intelligent agents begin handling daily tasks such as coffee, travel, and job hunting. AI is also entering rural clinics, street-side shops, and small and medium-sized enterprises.

The foundation for all this is not just "smart AI," but a gradually forming AI new economic infrastructure: from models, data, and intelligent agents, to terminals, payments, and security, AI is gaining "hands and feet" and "capillaries" to enter the real world.

At the same time, new industries and models are constantly emerging, AI is transforming from a "tool" into a "servant," and from "one-time interaction" into "long-term assistance." Ordinary people are also enjoying more accessible health, travel, employment, and lifestyle services.

From what is happening in the exhibition hall, we can see a picture of the AI new economy taking shape.

From the laboratory to real-world scenarios, smart robots will become more and more

The most significant signal released at this conference is that AI is gaining real action capabilities. This action capability first appears in the digital world: the evolution of basic large models allows AI to handle complex tasks; the explosion of intelligent agent applications lets audiences experience how AI releases productivity in an immersive way.

Outside the digital world, AI is also accelerating into the physical world. At the Outer Bank Conference, over 40 full-body intelligent manufacturers made their debut. Notably, robots can not only dance and play musical instruments, but also "work seriously" in industries and daily life.

In retail pharmacies, robots equipped with Ant Lingbo's general brain can autonomously complete order receiving, drug identification, sorting, and delivery in narrow channels of 80 centimeters. They can be deployed in real retail pharmacies without changing the original layout or medicine placement. Currently, the robot has started working in the real store of Guo Da Pharmacy in Shanghai, responsible for drug sorting, especially significantly relieving the workload of pharmacists at night.

At the same time, the same set of robotic brains can drive different forms of robots to work in multiple scenarios, including sorting random packages in logistics warehouses, completing parts loading and unloading in industrial settings, demonstrating the "one brain, multiple machines" approach reaching various industries.

In manufacturing, robots are moving from fixed positions to flexible operations. The wheeled dual-arm robot driven by Fudan University's Moshen embodied large model can identify washing machine bolt structures and assembly hole positions, autonomously completing grasping, positioning, inserting, and tightening.

In the field of life services, robots can take on more tasks. Qilang humanoid robots collaborate in laundries to complete long-range tasks such as retrieving clothes, turning machines on and off, and folding. Kepler robots enter narrow coffee shops to independently complete cup retrieval, beverage preparation, and cleaning. Jieshu exoskeletons assist users in walking, climbing stairs, and hiking through AI gait perception. Vite Dynamics' robotic dogs can actively follow and carry loads during shopping, package pickup, and camping.

Some high-risk tasks can also be entrusted to robots. Chen Xing Yuan Luo's flying intelligent entities and robotic dogs can enter restricted spaces such as nuclear power plants, subways, and water plants where there is no GPS, no light, or even strong interference, autonomously cruising, avoiding obstacles, and identifying defects. Er Xing Intelligent's quadruped inspection robot is designed for scenarios such as transformer stations and factories, replacing human workers to complete long-distance and high-risk inspections.

From "One App" to "A Group of Intelligent Agents," the Human-Computer Interaction Interface Is Becoming More Diverse

Outside of work, AI is taking over life completely. The "8-Hour Life Circle" built by the Outer Bank Conference shows that fragmented needs in catering, transportation, shopping, and housekeeping are now seamlessly connected by the same intelligent agent.

Ant Abao has completed the adaptation of more than 10,000 service AI, covering scenes such as dining orders, ride-hailing, cultural tourism, and government affairs, and is connected with terminals such as mobile phones, car machines, smart glasses, and large model applications. Users only need to express their needs naturally, and the intelligent agent can understand the intention, call the service, and complete the entire process of reservation, ordering, and payment.

AI can remember your needs: previously, you had to open the app repeatedly every day at a fixed time to order a coffee; now, just tell Abao, "Buy me a Starbucks iced Americano at 10 o'clock every day," and Abao's "coffee alarm" asynchronous task ability can set it once and take care of it long-term.

AI services have gone beyond the phone screen: through various terminals such as Li Xi cars, Qianwen glasses, Huawei phones, Xiaomi phones, OPPO, vivo, and Honor, users can summon Abao anytime and anywhere, achieving collaborative services across brands and applications. For example, when wearing Qianwen AI glasses, raising your eyes and asking, "What are the great coupons nearby?" Abao can help find discount food coupons; sitting in a Li Xi car, telling "Li Xi classmate" "help me pay the parking fee," and behind the scenes, Abao can complete the relevant service.

This means that in the future, users may not even know which app they are using. Just tell the AI around you what you want to do, and the AI can find the service on its own and complete the task.

AI not only changes the way people interact with machines but also changes the way future commercial services are organized and delivered.

AI Has Entered the 8-Hour Life, Becoming Everyone's Companion

If the previous two parts mostly occurred in the industrial sector, then this year's Outer Bank Conference shows the most direct change in the AI new economy: it is starting to enter the daily lives of ordinary people.

From a cup of coffee, a trip, to job hunting, medical treatment, and elderly care, AI is entering those most trivial and specific life scenarios.

Abao can help users plan travel, find housekeeping services, check consumption, handle housing fund and child-rearing subsidies, and also help users call driverless cars and complete ride payments.

These services may not seem "high-tech," but they precisely mean that AI is transitioning from a productivity tool for a few people to a lifestyle service infrastructure for more people.

Healthcare is one of the more typical examples.

In the "Future Health Center," AI is helping health management move from "passive treatment" to "active health."

In the home setting, take a photo before a meal and ask Afu, AI can provide personalized dietary advice based on weight goals, recent exercise, and health records: for those wanting to lose weight, focus on calorie intake; for the elderly, focus on salt and protein; for children, focus on nutritional balance.

Get on the OVAL smart temperature control bed cover, and AI can independently adjust the four areas' temperatures according to sleep and environmental data, allowing both people in the same bed to enjoy comfortable sleep; millimeter-wave radar can monitor the elderly's vital signs without being noticed, and notify family members if abnormalities occur; Qi Yuan Q1 robot can complete health checks with simple instructions, obtaining heart rate, blood oxygen, and body temperature data.

In hospitals, AI services have been integrated throughout the entire medical process: from Afu's smart matching of appointment sources, guide robots navigating inside the hospital, to cloud companionship sign-in, report interpretation in plain language, and one-stop settlement of medical insurance and commercial insurance. According to information, Afu's "cloud companion" has covered over 400 medical institutions nationwide and 30 medical nodes. The doctor version AI assistant can instantly search for tens of millions of documents, assisting with pre-consultation and follow-up 24/7.

AI has also brought health services to village entrances: in the village doctor's station, Afu is embedded in daily treatment, with real-time transcription of doctor-patient conversations and immediate auxiliary suggestions. If there are difficult cases, it can intelligently recommend referrals. Even elderly people in remote mountainous areas who don't speak Mandarin can receive health answers from top-level doctors at any time.

The Outer Bank Conference believes that the value of the AI new economy ultimately comes down to whether ordinary people can use it, are willing to use it, and can truly benefit from it.

The conference also concentrated on showcasing several cutting-edge applications of medical AI, including AI-assisted tumor diagnosis research, digital lung reconstruction, pathology computation, and technical exploration of multi-disease screening using AI combined with CT. The Daming Institute's plain CT + AI can detect five types of cancer in one scan, and has been implemented in several hospitals, including Lishui Central Hospital, screening over 100,000 images in less than a year, diagnosing over 900 cases.

From cities to villages, from young people to the elderly, from "treating illness" to "preventing illness," AI is bringing professional capabilities that were once relatively scarce to more people at a lower cost.

Breaking Through the Last Mile: Making It Possible for Street-side Shops and Small Businesses to Use AI

There was another strong signal in the exhibition area: AI is moving from the technological peak to the industrial plains, becoming a tool that is easily accessible to businesses and merchants.

In offline operations, the robot "Xiao Peng" becomes an AI version of the shop assistant, capable of welcoming guests, guiding, monitoring, and self-service checkout. Connected to the merchant's operating agent "Xiaoyu," it links the chain headquarters and stores. The boss can directly ask, "Which store is not selling well?" "Which products need restocking," and quickly restock and adjust prices. The Bai Ling 2.0 AI CFO Agent from Wangshang Bank can understand the boss's casual language, connect credit, bill, and tax capabilities to organize service plans.

In the production end of enterprises, Ant Digital's intelligent agent super factory focuses not on "making a smarter AI," but on providing an infrastructure for enterprises to mass-produce, deploy, manage, and use intelligent agents in a trustworthy manner. Ant Digital's Agentar has pre-installed over 200 industry skills and digital expert templates. Enterprises can rapidly build their own "digital employees" like building with LEGO bricks; meanwhile, the platform ensures that intelligent agents operate within the company's authority and compliance boundaries.

In the transaction link, Alipay's AI payment enables intelligent agents to move from "being able to handle matters" to "being able to transact": wear Qianwen AI glasses and "look at it" to pay, say a sentence to the iFlytek intelligent earpiece to top up your phone or order coffee. The Gaode Momentum quadruped robot "Tutu" jointly with "AI Pay" explores the world's first fully paid capable embodied intelligent product.

Ant International's Mobile Intelligent Agent Protocol (Agentic Mobile Protocol, abbreviated as AMP) further extends this capability to global markets: whether it's consumers around the world, merchants hoping to reach young smartphone users in Southeast Asia, or AI startups seeking global users, they can all achieve smoother and safer payments and transactions through intelligent agents.

When AI starts to call services across devices, even places orders and makes payments on behalf of users, new issues arise: who is acting, what permissions have been obtained, and how to trace back when problems occur?

The answer given by the Ant Security Exhibition Area is to make security a native system capability. When the user says, "Arrange my business trip for me," multiple intelligent agents collaborate in a secure channel, verifying identities, tracing intentions, controlling authorization, encrypting the entire process, and leaving a record. Even when spending money, the user must confirm, making security not a patch after AI actions, but the premise for safely organizing and delivering future commercial services.

From operations, production to transactions, and the security guarantees behind these economic activities, the last mile of AI is being paved under every merchant and enterprise's feet.

Humanism and Sustainability: The Other Two Exams for AI

As AI begins to create and work, what is the value of humans? When AI consumes massive computing power, how to account for the environmental impact? The first-ever "AI Concept Art Exhibition" and "Green Planet Zone" at the conference together addressed these soul-searching questions.

In the art exhibition, the AI system AARON created by Harold Cohen in 1985 independently produced and signed the work "AARON at Tsukuba, #219-3-85," responding to this idea from an earlier starting point: AI can be signed but cannot become Cohen. At the AI music concert, virtual idols performed alongside real bands, highlighting the chemical reaction between technological precision and human improvisation. As the technical barrier continues to drop, scarcity will return to human imagination and expression.

The green zone directly addresses energy consumption issues, visualizing each conversation's token consumption as the time a light bulb is lit, questioning the green value of each degree of electricity in the AI era. Ant Forest exhibited the "Innovative Water Resource Utilization Demonstration Plan for Arid Areas," exploring the use of innovative technology to solve the core issue of water in desert control.

From generation to action, from screen to physical objects, from the lab to the street-side shops, the 2026 Outer Bank Conference clearly reveals that the AI new economy has moved beyond concepts and is realistically entering reality through multiple dimensions such as embodied intelligence, lifestyle services, health management, and industrial inclusiveness. Its future is not only about being smarter, but also about creating more sustainable value with fewer resources and leaving irreplaceable space for human creativity.