Yes, in Shanghai, I saw good news everywhere.

Author | Su Zihua

Editor | Zheng Xuan

In the past six months, the popularity of DeepSeek has brought a turnaround to the domestic venture capital ecosystem, making people feel that opportunities are just around the corner. Some investors said that if you missed the first two years of the AI wave, there's no need to feel regretful, as more entrepreneurs have the chance to participate this year.

Meanwhile, in order to seize the AI dividends and avoid being eliminated, more and more people are suffering from "AI anxiety". Looking back at the crucial past six months, how is the world's change spreading? We've been in continuous communication with entrepreneurs and found some good news that can help relieve "AI anxiety".

01 "Omnipotent"

First, here's a piece of good news that makes insiders have mixed feelings and feel a bit "wronged". In early July, I talked with several technology or strategic leaders of listed software companies about AI implementation. They joked that there's a lot of "malicious marketing" in the industry around AI.

The most obvious thing is that there are "amazing good news" every day in the AI world. The self - media promotional copy usually contains the following words:

Shocking, everyone, legendary, subversive, revolutionary, crushing OpenAI, explosive, globally innovative, going crazy, so good that it breaks one's defenses...

It's obvious that in the world of AI marketing, there are almost no troubles. The only trouble is that the product is "so good that it breaks one's defenses" or "so good that it makes one feel lost".

If words themselves had lives, the high frequency of appearance of the "shocking - style" words might have made them extremely exhausted.

One of the executives complained to me that under the exaggerated rendering of self - media and manufacturers, customers think that with large AI models, products should be omnipotent. "Your peers' promotional plans all say they can do it. Why can't you?" Facing the customers' doubts, he said helplessly, "Actually, those peer companies can't deliver on their promises either."

However, at the same time, the real good news is tangible: customers' budgets have suddenly increased. "Last year, it might take three months to even get in touch with a customer, but after DeepSeek became popular this Spring Festival, customers came to us actively." He emphasized, "This is a huge change."

In the past few months, he noticed that many small and medium - sized enterprise customers have decided to set aside hundreds of thousands or even millions of budgets specifically for AI this year, and some don't even know what to do with it. "Among the needs of 100 customers, 60 to 80 might be vague needs." These are not real efficiency - improvement needs from business scenarios, but rather customers' eagerness to explore AI applications.

Both the business community and ordinary individuals want to participate in the wave or at least understand the profound changes brought by AI. A prominent example is that in late July, the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC for short) held in Shanghai set multiple historical records since its inception eight years ago: more than 800 enterprises participated in the exhibition, 5.5 times that of the first session; over 3,000 products were on display, and there were about 350,000 offline visitors. Tickets were extremely hard to get, comparable to a star concert.

This year, the team of robots "working" at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference has grown and started to emerge in the real world | Photo source: GeekPark

Fu Yingbo has attended WAIC for eight consecutive years. "WAIC has grown from an infant to a teenager." He was once the president of Megvii Technology, one of the "Four AI Dragons", and is now the CEO of Baiwang Co., Ltd., a data - intelligent service provider. "This is the result of industrial development. DeepSeek has exponentially improved the model capabilities and, to some extent, promoted the explosion of AI applications on the industrial side."

A friend who is an investor expressed a similar feeling to me: In China, there was almost no venture capital ecosystem in 2023 because almost all the money in the market was invested in the "Six Little Tigers" of large models. But after DeepSeek became popular this year, the confidence in the AI application layer has been ignited, and venture capital is flowing to more entrepreneurs.

Now, technology, money, and people are all full of excitement.

Before going to Shanghai to attend the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, I was eager to know what earth - shattering things enterprises planned to do with AI. However, after two days of visiting, a truly delightful discovery was the rise of "marginal desires":

The niche needs of ordinary people are being seen more; some once - seemingly - far - fetched imaginations can now be realized; and the attempts that were once restricted by technical thresholds no longer need to wait.

This is really great.

In the past six months, there has been a social hot - spot triggered by AI every month, which is an unprecedentedly high frequency. Photo taken at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) | Photo source: GeekPark

02 The Realization of Imagination

At that time, I was standing in front of Zuo Zongtang. Yes, the one who recovered Xinjiang and suppressed the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement during the late Qing Dynasty. I greeted him and then made an offensive request, asking him to tell me a joke. He spoke in classical Chinese, unfortunately, I didn't understand it.

This is a true story. This was the first AI agent (also called Agent) I encountered during the World Artificial Intelligence Conference.

The AI digital version of Zuo Zongtang is inside, and his facial expressions move when speaking | Photo source: GeekPark

Soon, I encountered an even more magnificent agent:

Probably the largest agent at the venue, it can blink, talk to you, but can't do physical work. It's mainly for "coolness" and providing emotional value | Photo source: GeekPark

Looking through the list of exhibitors, there was a startup team called "No Need to Go to Work" that makes efficiency office tools. I walked around the venue for two days but didn't find them. Maybe they really didn't come to "work".

Another company with a similar naming style is called "Unrealistic". They really have this name and exhibited a desktop bartending robot. The robot tries to quantify the subjective feelings of good food and drinks into a series of physical indicators, thus turning the diet problem into an algorithm problem and achieving personalization with the help of large AI models.

For example, if you tell their bartending robot that you want the taste of the moon, the feeling of sunlight on your body, the feeling of being in the wind, that you're very happy now, or that you're looking forward to a sunset, etc., the large model built into the robot will break down these abstract descriptions into corresponding ingredients and proportions. That is to say, if you want a drink, you have to first share your inner thoughts.

I asked "Unrealistic" to make me a drink. After taking a sip and savoring it, I thought, is this just a drink? No, it's a reflection of the current state of mind, a resistance to ordinary life, a gentle revelation of inner thoughts, and a connection with the drink.

This is it. I'd call it the social connector for introverts. It's fun but consumes a lot of drinks | Photo source: GeekPark

Similar applications include AI perfume - blending, AI jewelry design. You describe your imagination to the AI, and it will give you a plan after decomposition.

There's an AI memoir product called "Xiaolu Light - Year", which shows the gentle side of AI applications. The elderly can directly talk to this AI application, tell their stories according to the guidance, and then the AI will automatically organize them into a story and finally form a complete personal biography.

Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel laureate in literature and the author of "The Museum of Innocence", once made a declaration, which roughly means that we already have too many museums about nations and countries, but there are almost no museums about an individual - about when you realized yourself, when you matured, when you fell in love with someone, when you realized that this love was unfulfillable, etc. He said that our era needs more such things.

And AI memoir products are echoing this. It can help everyone build their own "historical records".

What also impressed me deeply are:

Using AI to create virtual internships; game AI coaches; AI - driven activity and intention matching platforms to make the matching more accurate; bed - sweeping robots that look like rollers and can automatically cruise to remove mites, dust, and hair from the bed for users before going to bed every night; AI financial management, etc...

There are too many to list.

The CTO of a smart hardware service provider sighed that after large models became popular, the demands from customers and consumers they received were diverse, very creative, and changing extremely fast. Moreover, "most manufacturers can no longer cope with consumers' strong demands for AI".

More importantly, the development of large models has rapidly lowered the technical threshold for developing a smart product. The difficulty of developing a new app using AI tools is now approaching that of writing a WeChat official account article. The internal needs that were once unimaginable due to technical limitations are starting to emerge.

Li Zhifei, the founder of Mobvoi who has been researching human - computer interaction for more than a decade, recently said in the live - show "Tonight's Tech Talk" on GeekPark that in the past, the threshold for technology entrepreneurship was very high: you had to raise funds and support a team of 10 - 20 people to start. Now, with AI coding, you don't need to raise funds, and one person can at least create a prototype from R & D to marketing. This has completely changed the logic of entrepreneurship.

Behind this is the rise of a new business paradigm.

From now on, designers, artists, craftsmen, and any ordinary person with an idea are no longer just the proposers of "wild" ideas, but can also become the creators and sellers of products. Those niche, less - commercial, far - fetched, and "ridiculous - sounding" ideas don't need to wait for others to realize them.

This is an era when everyone can be a product definer and everyone can be an entrepreneur. I'm glad to see it really happening.

03 "Non - human" Organizations

After visiting the exhibition and attending the forums, I also had a strong feeling: Software developers are no longer providing tools for customers as they did in the past, but are providing "employees". They are providing a "living being".

For example, customer - service robots are the most common; in addition, there are AI digital coaches on - site that can teach sales skills, provide on - boarding training, customer - service training, etc. to enterprise employees; there are AI inspectors working in factories; and there are also roles like brand - marketing masters.

Some product promotional slogans are "Mass - replicate digital employees".

Now, the criteria for evaluating an AI product have become: high emotional intelligence, smart, capable of working, and cheap. If you think about it carefully, aren't these the same criteria used to evaluate human employees?

There's a view that: The so - called AI implementation means to upgrade the business level of AI agents from that of a novice or an amateur to that of a professional. Soon, enterprises will no longer buy individual functions, but hire "digital employees" and "digital experts".

Isn't this "human - machine symbiosis"?

In June this year, when we were communicating with Zhang Xiaoyu, a scholar who studies how technology affects human society, he joked, "Our generation grew up playing games and chatting on QQ. My child might fall in love with five or six AIs in their lifetime."

The hottest idol at present. The boxing champion! I'm here to watch your game! | Photo source: GeekPark

The robots waiting in the wings. They are the busiest intelligent species besides humans during the conference | Photo source: GeekPark

In his newly published book "The Pre - history of AI Civilization", he put forward a subversive perspective: to try to abandon "anthropocentrism" and understand the great changes of the era that are taking place. AI will become another advanced intelligent species besides humans and is even smarter than humans.

Unexpectedly, this prediction is almost becoming a reality.

Maybe soon, we'll have to learn how to manage "non - human" organizations. Everyone has to learn how to direct many AI employees to work.

If this year's WAIC is a place that presents the future in a concentrated way, then it gave me a very contrasting feeling: There's no "youth worship" here.

Currently, in the artificial intelligence circle, many people are hyping up "youth worship". Especially investment institutions and startup communities like to label themselves, claiming that they prefer Generation Z, only follow young people/those born after 2000, that only young people can make good use of AI, and that they should stand with those born after 2000. It's as if being over 30 years old is a heinous crime.

From historical experience, creating "identity recognition", designing a sense of community, and creating some illusory superiority is indeed an effective mobilization method. It can subtly elevate the process of satisfying one's own interests into an altruistic and technically - idealistic action call.

In my opinion, hyping up "youth worship" is no different from selling age anxiety. In essence, they are both commercial means for self - profit and don't make one seem truly avant - garde.

At the conference site, I found that from speakers, to explainers at various booths, to entrepreneurs