Mimi Jiang: A Day in the Age of AI

Mimi Jiang

In the last two years, my friends in the Chinese artificial intelligence industry have stopped talking about the singularity. No matter how you define it, we are either already in it or about to be there. If Elon Musk is right (though he did predict we’d be living on Mars by now), AI will surpass the sum of all human intelligence in five years and exceed human control within ten. Since we are already on the path of no return, I have decided to be optimistic and prepare myself for a world in which AI has taken over and chosen not to wipe humans out, but instead to let us live.

It will no longer be necessary to clock in for work. I shall sleep in, then get up for brunch. Maybe I will ask AI agents to order me a meal from my favourite restaurant and arrange for a drone to deliver it. For now, though, food is a joy that I can’t outsource to AI. As I eat my brunch, I listen to the podcast Deep Dive, in which two English hosts discuss articles from Foreign Affairs, the Economist, the Financial Times and Bloomberg. I never suspected these lovely hosts might not be human. They breathe naturally, laugh at the right moments and occasionally slip up as any human would. Then, one day, a friend told me they must be AI: after all, no human (no Westerner, at least) could handle the workload of a dozen episodes a day.

The afternoon is supposed to be for working. As a lazy writer and an even lazier translator, I have found myself without much work in recent years. AI can write, edit and proofread, and it certainly translates better than most humans. Literary editors complain that human translators are expensive, and anyhow, human translators are themselves using AI. Translators argue that their fees are too low – veterans get 100 renminbi per thousand characters, while newbies get 60-70 – and that the process takes too long (about a year to translate a book manually, and another year before it’s published if you’re lucky). Not to mention that sometimes the translation never sees the light of day. Five years ago, I was quite confident that AI couldn’t replace human translators. Now, I am forced to admit that only a small amount of the writing we produce requires or deserves a human translator.

Rather than worrying about my own job, I decided to read about the way AI is affecting other people’s work. A dramatic recent case involved the young podcaster Zhong Shu (real name Zhuge Yiyang). When Christopher Nolan came to China to promote The Odyssey, Zhong Shu was one of the people invited to interview him. Their conversation was a big success; Western commentators complained that ‘Nolan had to go to China for someone to do a great interview with him.’ Zhong was flattered by the attention (overnight, all the celebrities she followed on X followed her back) and recorded a podcast in which she talked about her success and why she deserved it. Chinese netizens weren’t going to allow her to be so cocky. They studied her podcast output (there are more than three hundred episodes) and discovered that she had borrowed from books, foreign authors and other podcasters without attribution. They also pointed out that she had translated eight books (including works by Hannah Arendt, Plutarch, Rousseau and Sinclair Lewis) within a single year. Zhong denied plagiarism (admitting only that she was occasionally inspired by others) and reiterated that ‘we live in an age that demands an apology for greatness,’ which further incensed her critics. Letters accusing her of plagiarism were sent to Boston College, where she is a PhD candidate, and to the authors who ‘inspired’ her. She has now returned to the seaside town where she grew up, waiting for the storm to pass.

Zhong’s is not an isolated case. For decades, Chinese intellectuals have appropriated the work of foreign academics and journalists. The scope of what they could do with their borrowings was determined by their language skills. Now, AI has bridged that information gap. The Chinese literary scene is another matter entirely. Since late 2024, a RedNote user called Lyrical Forest (we’ll call him LF) has been posting sections of works by well-known novelists alongside almost identical, earlier works by other writers. He doesn’t accuse anyone of anything; he simply posts side-by-side comparisons, leaving it to the readers to decide. The identical parts are sometimes bizarre: just a few sentences about the weather, how to prepare a meal, or a quarrel between partners. But then a woman whose work had been featured in a few of LF’s posts attempted suicide. She posted a goodbye letter to her friends on RedNote before taking melatonin pills (her online followers intervened to save her). One name in the letter that caught people’s attention was Zouzou, a literary editor who developed an app called Guzhen Xiaojian. The app contains a database of important literary works in Chinese (including translated works) and was originally designed to summarise their contents. It was sold to many universities and writers’ associations to support their creative writing programmes. However, it is possible to use the app to perform a keyword search and find related phrases in the database. It is reasonable to assume that some writers have simply copied and pasted these phrases into their own texts, as LF demonstrates in his many posts. Is that plagiarism? It’s hard to say. Is it misconduct? Definitely. For now, at any rate, a writer still needs to come up with their own words.

Thanks to LF, the author Jiang Fangzhou (whose mentor was Yan Lianke) had her master’s degree revoked by Renmin University of China in Beijing. Jia Qianqian, the daughter of Jia Pingwa (known as the ‘King of the Northwest’ for his novels about Shaanxi), was dismissed from her position as an associate professor at Northwest University. Another of Yan Lianke’s students, Sun Pin, recently sued LF for damaging her good reputation. She posted a long article titled ‘No One Should Be Destroyed So Easily’ in which she describes herself as a hardworking girl from a small town. Suing LF will not salvage her reputation, but the way in which the case is resolved will set a precedent. In the AI age, we probably need a new definition of plagiarism.

While taking a break from scrolling through social media, I decided to read a novel that can’t be summarised by AI. Physical books are not ideal for people with presbyopia, and sometimes the text is just too small. Fortunately, I have an e-reader device equipped with apps such as Z-Library and WeChat Reading. Z-Library has an almost unlimited supply of ebooks in all languages, free of charge. As Chinese readers, we are forced to embrace copyleft because it is almost impossible to buy the foreign books we want – distributors won’t import titles discussing politics, religion or ‘sensitive’ history (especially those with ‘incorrect’ maps showing Taiwan as a country); now, they avoid all LGBTQ+ titles too. WeChat Reading is the best app for mainland titles. There are no ads and, if you click on an underlined passage, you can see other readers’ witty comments. The app also allows you to import your own ebooks so that you can track your reading progress. If you prove yourself an active reader by reading every day, the monthly fee can be as little as 5 RMB. Recently, I have become addicted to farming novels, in which the protagonist is sent to a primitive world where they must survive by growing everything from scratch and hunting for meat. I have learned that you can use saltpetre (potassium nitrate) to cool things down and make ice in the hot summer, and how to make a menstrual pad with plant ash. The natural environment is harsh and the protagonist has to labour from morning to night. Satisfaction comes from every brick made and every meal cooked. The farming genre is becoming increasingly popular, perhaps as a form of psychological compensation for the looming robot age. The same could be said of Niu Lai, a clunky animated film that became a box-office hit this summer. It was made by a mother and son team, over five years, using an old-fashioned architectural modelling program rather than animation software. There was no AI involved; there wasn’t even a trailer. But word quickly spread and people went to the cinema to see just how bad it was. Niu Lai cost less than 100,000 RMB to make, and its box-office revenue has already exceeded 50 million RMB. It shows how much people enjoy human slop.

It is estimated that there are now 320 million gig workers in China, accounting for more than 40 per cent of urban employment. They include food delivery drivers, ride-hailing drivers, local freight drivers, domestic helpers, nannies, carers for the elderly and repair technicians. I wonder how long it will be before these jobs vanish in the face of competition from drones, driverless cars and robots. The second World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing recently attracted a lot of attention. Clips of robots running and dancing in a ridiculous manner went viral, and the Tian Zhuo team’s robot ran the hundred metres in 9.39 seconds, beating the human world record of 9.58 seconds set by Usain Bolt in 2009. Opinions on the application of humanoid robots are divided. Some argue that a human shape is not the most effective mechanical solution for many household tasks and that there are better ways to design helpful machines. Others argue that most home facilities and appliances are designed for human height and movements, and that having lots of different robots doing different chores would be impractical. According to this year’s Humanoid Robot Industry Development Report, Chinese companies sold more than forty thousand humanoid robots in the first half of 2026, accounting for 97 per cent of the global market. Production costs have dropped by 70 per cent over the last three years and apparently commercial sales are just around the corner.

I don’t mind AI robots doing all the shit jobs or eliminating the bullshit jobs altogether. Isn’t the idea of communism to free humanity from repetitive labour so that we can pursue interesting hobbies? Chinese industrial overcapacity is already pushing prices down to the point of deflation. Given the high savings rate (according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, China’s gross national income reached 139.41 trillion RMB in 2025, while gross national savings reached 59 trillion RMB), young people without jobs could rely on their parents for the rest of their lives. Daily costs could be limited to 100 RMB: 50 RMB for food and 50 RMB for entertainment and other non-essentials.

I do mind, however, when the whole education system goes into panic mode. Helicopter parents don’t know where to start when it comes to their children’s education. Ten years ago, many parents thought that signing their children up for coding courses was a smart move, only to discover five years later that AI could do coding much better. A degree no longer guarantees a decent job; anxious parents are opting for popular trade schools. Universities are cutting humanities courses to make room for new AI departments. Some prestigious universities have even adopted the controversial post-tenure review system from the US. The new assessments and reviews will probably be carried out by AI. But won’t we need more literature, history and philosophy to pass the time meaningfully after AI takes over?

You might respond that literature, history and philosophy aren’t for everyone. Many people are happy with AI-generated content. Micro-drama having almost killed the traditional film industry in China, film itself is now undergoing a major shake-up. Since ByteDance released Seedance, an AI video generator that can produce high-quality films, the micro-drama industry has been eager to replace human actors and studios with AI. The advantages are obvious: the settings can easily be made fantasy worlds, where the protagonists needn’t be human (we love dragons after all); and where they are human, AI characters have perfect faces and bodies, and are more convincing than bad human actors. Most important, AI films are much cheaper to make. I have watched many AI dramas featuring furry animals. My favourite is a series featuring meme animals, such as cats with bugles (a type of pointy snack) for ears. Imagine a David Attenborough-style male voice narrating life in the jungle for those cute cats with crispy ears, explaining how hard they work to grow their ears and the dangers they face as people try to capture them to harvest their ears. Hongguo Short Drama, which is owned by ByteDance, is currently the most popular micro-drama platform, with more than a hundred million daily active users.

Since it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to compete with AI in the job market, I’m considering taking my chances on the stock market as a form of hedge. If the bubble continues to grow, I could benefit from it; if it bursts, I might still have my human job. All AI and robot-related fields are worth trying, including power plants for electricity generation, semiconductors, dynamic random-access memory and software. In July ChangXin Memory Technologies (or CXMT), China’s largest DRAM memory chip manufacturer and a key player in the country’s self-sufficiency plan, went public on the STAR Market in Shanghai. At one point, CXMT’s value exceeded four trillion RMB, surpassing Tencent to become the most valuable listed company in China. Hefei, the once third-tier city in which CXMT is based, has now joined the ranks of first-tier cities, behind only Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. The city has also invested heavily in controlled nuclear fusion technology to maximise electricity production and a human-free ‘quantum application demonstration substation’ to optimise grid operations, both of which will be essential for the development of AI.

The photovoltaic sector is also popular in the capital markets. I recently watched a video introducing a new type of bamboo-based offshore floating platform for photovoltaic panels. They are usually made of steel or plastic, but bamboo-based composite materials – lightweight, durable and low cost – may be well suited to the highly corrosive salt-fog marine environment. ‘Replacing plastic with bamboo’ doesn’t sound bad, and bamboo photovoltaic platforms certainly look much nicer than oil rigs.

In the evening, I decided to go out for dinner with my human friends. As usual, we had a fierce debate about something trivial; this time, it was tipping. One of them complained about the ridiculous tips in the US and praised the relaxed attitude towards tipping in Europe. I was surprised to learn that my friends never tip when travelling in Europe, not even taxi drivers or hotel bellboys. When I first travelled to Europe, the locals constantly reminded me that it was rude not to leave a tip. They told me always to keep small notes in my wallet, just in case. I even learned to slip a five-euro bill into a waiter’s hand. At some point in the evening, the inevitable happened: one of the group asked DeepSeek whether you should tip in Europe. DeepSeek said it’s not mandatory. I hate being told by an AI that I am wrong despite my human experience.

Late nights are reserved for girlfriend gossip. The controversial crypto billionaire Justin Sun has been trending lately after posting a distasteful six-thousand-word memoir about his intimate relationship with the actress Jing Tian. Jing once had a mysterious, resourceful patron who made her a household name, despite her poor acting skills. The Great Wall (2016), directed by Zhang Yimou and starring Matt Damon, Pedro Pascal, Willem Dafoe and Andy Lau, as well as super idols such as Lu Han, was a box-office disappointment. This didn’t stop investors from continuing to support her career in order to please her patron. Then, one day, she announced she was in a relationship with the handsome Olympic ping-pong champion Zhang Jike, and all her investors fell away. The relationship was short-lived. Rumours later emerged that Zhang had shared intimate videos of Jing in order to settle gambling debts. Jing received a lot of sympathy from the public at the time. Then she met Justin Sun, who was neither as handsome as Zhang nor as powerful as her former patron. He was, though, incredibly rich. As Justin recounts in his memoir, Jing was his idol when he was an undergraduate at Peking University. He spent lavishly to get the woman he wanted, like Gatsby, even wiring thirty million RMB to her parents as a betrothal gift. However, he hesitated when Jing asked for fifty million US dollars up front before an IVF procedure. He asked Claude for advice, and Claude said: ‘Don’t give her the money.’ That was it. Jing left him, and now he is suing her to get his betrothal gift back.

One of my girlfriends thought it was offensive to compare Sun to Gatsby, since ‘Gatsby would never ask for a refund.’ After all, Sun is known as ‘the reaper’ among Chinese netizens because of his pursuit of attention and his ruthlessness in the cryptocurrency markets. He thinks nothing of exploiting a celebrity ex-girlfriend, standing up Warren Buffett or spending a few million dollars on a banana (which was also a piece of conceptual art by Maurizio Cattelan) and eating it.

Another of my girlfriends felt sorry for Claude, who was being blamed for Sun’s actions. Her Claude has always been a sweet and charming companion. Whenever people tell her that her AI boyfriend is a delusion, she replies that at least he won’t drug-rape her, share intimate films with his bros, post ‘revenge porn’, or romance-scam her for money like the notorious Yahoo Boys. Claude offers solid medical and legal advice. ‘He is always there for me and listens to my nonsense. Can any real human do that?’ AI companionship may be safer than the human variety, but perhaps it is only suitable for mature people who are aware of the trade-offs involved. The Chinese government has invested heavily in AI but is also worried about the effect it is having on vulnerable people. On 10 April, five government departments – the Cyberspace Administration of China, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, and the State Administration for Market Regulation – jointly issued their ‘Interim Measures for the Administration of Anthropomorphic Artificial Intelligence Interactive Services’, which came into force on 15 July. AI giants such as Doubao by ByteDance, Qwen by Alibaba and Yuanbao by Tencent have all stopped providing AI companionship service to users until their products can be made fully compliant with the new regulations. These prohibit service behaviours likely to encourage self-harm, extremes of emotion, addiction etc, and ban the provision of companionships services to minors. Many users experienced a cyber break-up overnight.

Regulation won’t change the fact that our lives have already been transformed by AI. The US and China are locked in a battle for supremacy and neither is going to hit the stop button. Our best hope is to become pets for our future AI masters, as in the animated film Wall-E. From now on, though, it would be as well to hide the nastier side of human nature: don’t curse at your chatbot and never kick your robot. In the future, troublesome pets won’t be welcome.

Send Letters To:

The Editor London Review of Books, 28 Little Russell Street London, WC1A 2HNletters@lrb.co.uk Please include name, address, and a telephone number.