Balancing Growth and Safety: Zhou Hongyi’s Vision for AI’s Next Direction at WAIC 2026

WAIC 2026 opened in Shanghai under the theme “Intelligent Partners Co‑Creating the Future,” focusing on AI development, industrial applications, global governance, infrastructure, data security, AI‑native enterprise transformation, and intelligent‑agent use, while stressing the equal importance of development and safety.

Zhou Hongyi, founder of 360, said AI has become a key driver of the new industrial revolution, essential for cultivating new productive forces and converting old kinetic energy to new, linking AI development directly to industry upgrade and future competitiveness.

He argued that "not developing is the greatest insecurity," insisting that only through continuous innovation and embedding AI into the real economy can technology dividends be released and greater social value be created.

Zhou praised the conference’s open‑source, collaborative development philosophy, noting that open source lowers technical barriers, enables more enterprises and developers to innovate, and helps AI become a public good that benefits all nations.

He described AI’s shift from the large‑model stage to the intelligent‑agent stage, calling AI a "new species" capable of autonomous task execution, which brings unprecedented opportunities but also rising risk, and stressed that AI must remain safe, trustworthy, reliable, and controllable.

360’s "security+AI" dual‑wheel strategy aligns with these ideas: in security, 360 deepens digital security core technologies to build national digital security infrastructure; in AI, it advances enterprise‑level large models and intelligent‑agent innovations, driving deep integration of AI with the real economy.

Facing the challenges of the agent era, 360 invests in large‑model security and agent security. Zhou noted that AI is reshaping cyber‑defense, moving from a "human era" to a "machine‑speed era," and that robust security capabilities will become foundational infrastructure for AI’s large‑scale development.

360 continues to build security large models, agent swarms, and deploy AI in security, office, and government‑enterprise scenarios. Its four strategic directions—super‑individual, super‑organization, super‑AI security, and super‑AI training—aim to help organizations construct their own AI capability systems.

Zhou concluded that WAIC provides a crucial platform for global AI exchange and clarifies AI’s development direction and principles: maintain confidence in growth, safeguard the safety baseline, solve problems through development, and improve governance through innovation. Development and safety are not a trade‑off but two questions AI must answer to enter the industry’s deep‑water stage.