Abstract: Digital transformation of the economy is an important symbol of the current industrial revolution, in which artificial intelligence is the key driving force for the development of the digital economy. While promoting the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry, intelligent production also brings opportunities for expanding service exports. Taking the number of industrial robots installed as an indicator reflecting the degree of industrial intelligence, the impact of industrial intelligence on service exports is analyzed from both theoretical and empirical aspects. In terms of theory, the installation of industrial robots is included in the Melitz heterogeneous enterprise trade model, which proves that industrial robots can directly affect the export scale of the manufacturing industry, and the importance of expanding the export scale of the manufacturing industry to the promotion of service exports from the perspective of industrial linkages, which provides a new theoretical chain for the research on the impact of artificial intelligence on service trade. On the empirical side, using the industrial robot data and the macro trade data from 2009 to 2019 of 52 countries, the empirical study found that industrial intelligence did promote service exports, and had a more significant effect on developing countries and productive services. The results remained stable after testing robustness and processing endogeneity. The mechanism test showed that the export scale of manufacturing industry played a positive role in the mechanism of industrial robots influencing service exports. The results provide important reference for China to promote artificial intelligence to better improve the level of service exports in the digital economy era.

Key words: digital economy, industrial robots, industrial linkages, service exports