The application of robots in thoracic surgery is mainly based on the da Vinci general surgery robot. With the popularization of artificial intelligence (AI) application scenarios, the combination of AI and robots is more closely, and there is a strong clinical demand and huge application space for the development of specialized disease-specific robotic systems for thoracic surgery. This article aims to systematically describe the history of the rise of specialized surgical robots and the status of the localization of surgical robots in China, propose the concept of applying AI to the research and development of integrated specialized disease-specific robots in thoracic surgery, and clarify the ethics and prospects that intelligent specialized disease-specific surgical robots will face.