I studied the Chinese Internet for a decade, including several occasions of protest and civil unrest. It is time that I lay down how this is going to go. Buckle up: 🧵1/47 I don't fucking know. Nobody does. That's the whole point. Approaching the question from a predictive standpoint is epistemologically sus and in itself a precise political position that happens to be oriented in very peculiar ways

I've spent the past month writing a thing on AI in China, some takeaways: just like anywhere else, AI 人工智能 means everything & nothing in China, spanning core computational technologies and theoretical research as well as mundane applications of algorithms and interface gimmicks - but at least the Chinese term for it includes 人 (man) and 工 (labor)