How to promote breakthrough innovation to solve the “bottleneck” technical problems has become a key question that urgently needs to be answered in both theoretical and practical fields. The current new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation led by artificial intelligence was endowing this key question with new connotations and meanings. Based on the theory of social technology systems， it empirically examined the impact and mechanism of artificial intelligence application on breakthrough innovation in Chinese A-share high-tech listed companies from 2012 to 2022. It finds that there is a U-shaped relationship between the application of artificial intelligence and breakthrough innovation in high-tech enterprises. Mechanism analysis shows that the application of artificial intelligence has the inverted U-shaped impact and the U-shaped impact on strategic inertia and knowledge diversification， which are the mediators of the nonlinear relationship between the application of artificial intelligence and breakthrough innovation in high-tech enterprises. Heterogeneity analysis shows that executives with a digital background， a solid foundation of digital transformation in enterprises， and ample government subsidies help high-tech enterprises break free from the negative impact of artificial intelligence application on breakthrough innovation earlier. It reveals the double-edged sword mechanism of artificial intelligence application on breakthrough innovation by constructing an analytical framework of “artificial intelligence application organizational adaptability adjustment- breakthrough innovation”. It not only helps to expand the application boundaries of social technology system theory， providing a possible explanatory perspective for bridging the existing “policy effectiveness view” and “technology orientation view”， but also provides practical guidance for government departments to accurately formulate artificial intelligence industry policies and for high-tech enterprises to scientifically plan artificial intelligence application strategies and optimize breakthrough innovation resource allocation.