With the acceleration of the global integration process and the development of artificial intelligence technology, the regional economic cooperation model under the “Belt and Road” strategy needs to be optimized in order to enhance the benefits of cooperation and promote the coordinated development of the region. This paper discusses the optimization path and benefit analysis of the regional economic cooperation model under the “Belt and Road” strategy with the assistance of artificial intelligence. The study constructs a regional economic readiness evaluation system and a stochastic frontier gravity model, measures the readiness of regional economic cooperation through principal component analysis and efficacy score method, and analyzes the impact of economic cooperation on regional economic growth by using fixed effect model. The results show that Singapore, Estonia and Israel are among the top three countries along the Belt and Road in terms of readiness for regional economic cooperation, while China is in the 14th place due to its low factor endowment and business environment scores. The empirical analysis shows that the GDP level of cross-border regional economic partner countries has a significant negative impact on trade inefficiency factors, and the increase of geographical distance has a significant hindering effect on trade efficiency. Fixed effects model results further confirm that joining the regional economic cooperation model has a significant positive effect on economic growth, with a coefficient of 0.086, and passes the significance test at the 1% level. Based on the findings of the study, this paper proposes optimization suggestions such as strengthening the construction of network infrastructure, promoting the construction of the economic community and building a digital financial service system, in order to promote the higher-quality development of the “Belt and Road” regional economic cooperation.
