为探究人工智能是否对提升技术创新水平具有赋能效应，基于2011—2020年30个省级行政区面板数据，运用双向固定效应模型和中介效应模型，实证分析人工智能对技术创新的影响以及创新环境的中介效应。基准回归结果表明，人工智能能够显著赋能技术创新水平提升。中介效应检验结果表明，创新环境在人工智能赋能技术创新的过程中发挥部分中介作用，人工智能有助于优化创新环境，聚集人才并吸引投资，从而促进技术创新水平提升。异质性分析结果表明，对于经济发展水平越高、技术越密集的地区，人工智能赋能技术创新水平提升的作用越明显，区域间发展差距较大；对于3种不同创新类型，人工智能均表现出显著促进效应，对发明专利、实用新型专利和外观设计专利的促进作用呈现由低到高的特点。非线性分析结果表明，人工智能赋能技术创新整体呈现边际效应递减趋势。

At present, the global “fourth” industrial revolution is accelerating, the world’s competitive landscape is being reshaped, and improving technological innovation has become the core strategy for countries to seek competitive advantages. Artificial intelligence (AI), as a new generation of “general-purpose technology” after the Internet, is regarded as the key to promoting the “fourth” industrial revolution, and its increasingly strong penetration and high spillover are becoming an important driving force to enable technological innovation. The current research has explored the direct impact of artificial intelligence on technological innovation, but there has been no discussion on the possible nonlinear relationships;the mechanism of the role of innovation environment in the relationship between artificial intelligence and technological innovation has not been explored yet;and the impact of regional differences and innovation type differences has not yet been paid attention to, and heterogeneity analysis is warranted.#br#This study selects the number of patent authorizations from each province to represent the level of technological innovation in the region, uses the number of patent applications to replace the number of patent authorizations for robustness testing, and takes the installation volume of industrial robots in each province as an indicator to measure artificial intelligence. Using the sample data of 30 provincial-level administrative regions in China from 2011 to 2020, the study analyzes and tests the empowering effect of AI on enhancing technological innovation and the mediating effect of the innovation environment using a two-way fixed-effect model and a mediating-effect model.#br#The results reveal that, first of all, AI can significantly empower the enhancement of regional technological innovation. The empowering effect of AI can accelerate knowledge integration and creation, promote knowledge spillover, optimize resource allocation, and thus improve technological innovation. Secondly, the facilitation effect of AI on technological innovation works through the intermediary mechanism of innovation environment and is further tested by the mediating effects of sub-mediating variables such as new enterprises, foreign investment and venture capital. Thirdly, in the heterogeneity analysis, it is found that AI has a significant empowerment promotion effect on technological innovation in eastern regions, coastal regions and technology-intensive regions, and has not yet shown a significant promotion effect in Midwest regions, non-coastal regions, and non-technology-intensive regions, although the regression coefficients are positive. AI has a significant empowerment-boosting effect on all three innovation types and shows a higher marginal effect on design patents. Finally, the promotion of AI in technological innovation shows a marginally decreasing non-linear characteristic, which indicates that there is an “optimal interval” of AI-empowered technological innovation enhancement.#br#The implications arising from the study are listed. (1) The government should integrate knowledge resources between different subjects with the help of the AI technological innovation platform, strengthen knowledge spillover and knowledge creation, and enhance technological innovation through industry-university-research integration. In addition, the government should further strengthen basic AI research, make a strict investigation of the use of government funds for innovation and provide special government funds to reduce the innovation crowding-out effect of rent-seeking behavior. (2) It is essential to accelerate the intelligent transformation of infrastructure to empower technological innovation, apply AI technology in enterprise project decision-making, project risk demonstration, build an intelligent risk warning platform based on AI technology to carve a multi-dimensional risk portrait of enterprises in the region from assets, cash, and transactions, and build an inter-regional cooperation and innovation network based on AI technology to realize cross-regional and cross-field resource integration. (3) Because of the regional heterogeneity of the promotion of AI in technological innovation, governments in regions with relatively weak foundations should improve the top-level design and institutional guarantee of AI development and strengthen the financial and policy support for intelligent transformation of infrastructure. Then the leading regions should focus on improving the level of AI technology application, and take the lead in undertaking key technology research tasks. Finally, the government should play a policy-guiding role in actively promoting AI hardware facilities, such as AI data centers and AI innovation pilot zones, to enrich the areas with weak foundation, realize regional division of labor synergy, and give play to the innovation empowerment effect of AI technology.#br#