The 15th Five-Year Plan fully deploys the “AI Plus” initiative, indicating that the relationship between artificial intelligence and industrial upgrading is evolving from simple technological superposition to profound in depth integration. Guided by the strategic orientation of the 15th Five-Year Plan, this paper systematically sorts out the theoretical logic, staged evolution and practical paths of industrial upgrading empowered by artificial intelligence, and constructs a coordinated promotion framework characterized by synchronous resonance. This paper holds that the core of collaborative advancement lies in properly handling the relationship between “substitution” and “integration”. It is essential to unleash the disruptive potential of artificial intelligence as a general-purpose technology, while anchoring its application in remedying industrial shortcomings and expanding comparative advantages, so as to find a dynamic equilibrium for coordinated evolution between transformative variables and quality increments.