Inside China's AI rush w/ Afra Wang

the vibe

China seems to be living in the future. Facial recognition everywhere, a delivery drone overhead, a grandma paying for scallions by scanning a QR code, and AI woven into all of it. The society, the people, are astonishingly receptive to technology in a way that can make Silicon Valley look timid. AI is being radically embraced, hailed by the state as the "new quality productive force" that will carry the nation into its next chapter. Is China the techno-futurist country building the future, the one the rest of the world keeps nervously watching? Or is it a brave new world where no one gets the option to say no, not to the technology, not to digital indulgence, and not to the grand future the state has already planned for you? This talk examines not only whether Xi Jinping cares about AGI, but also the human stories behind Chinese society’s collision with—and embrace of—AI. It draws on three unpublished pieces by Afra Wang: one on the massive, cultish “AI class” industry; one on the “industrial-AI-slop complex”; and one on what independent vibe coders in China are really up to. ⭑.ᐟ About the Lecturer Afra Wang is a Bay Area-based writer and journalist who focuses on technological modernity through a humanistic lens, spanning China and Silicon Valley in the global AI age. She writes a Substack Concurrent.blog ⭑.ᐟ WTF is TIAT! tiat is the intersection of art & technology! we are an experimental gallery for creative technologists to experiment, exhibit, and expand their…