The ageing of the population has become a serious test for all countries and regions, and industrial intelligence, as a new development model that integrates traditional industries with modern technology, will contribute to the deep integration of the industrial and innovation chains and thus to the enhancement of national core competitiveness. Based on the dual influence of population ageing and industrial intelligence, this paper uses the 2016 version of the World Input-Output Database (WIOD) data for 16 manufacturing industries in 43 countries from 2000 to 2014 to construct an econometric regression model to empirically test the relationship between population ageing, industrial intelligence and technological complexity of exports. The results of the study show, firstly, that population ageing plays a positive role in the technical complexity of exports. Secondly, the introduction of industrial intelligence mitigates the adverse effects of an ageing population through a complementary substitution mechanism on the one hand, and promotes industrial upgrading and transformation through the infiltration and expansion effects of industrial intelligence on the other, which in turn has a positive impact on the increase in technological sophistication of exports. In addition, the paper further divides the level of industry technology, the level of national development and the age structure of the ageing population, and explores the impact of industry intelligence in different dimensions. The results show that industrial intelligence can have a positive impact on export technological sophistication at the industry level, at the national level and in terms of ageing demographics. The research results provide a new way of thinking, through which countries around the world can formulate population policies and industrial policies and improve the complexity of export technology under the background of aging.