Ten Lives in China's Age of AI

Snapshot

Sixth Tone’s dispatch, “Ten Lives in China’s Age of AI,” profiles 10 ordinary people — young and old, rural and urban — to show how generative AI has moved from labs to living rooms. An 11‑year‑old in Shanghai composing songs, a Henan farmer using AI to identify weeds, and a college student who built an AI boyfriend are all part of the picture. It has been reported that by the end of 2025 more than 600 million people in China were using generative AI tools, a user base that grew 141% in a single year.

From policy to platforms

The rapid spread did not come out of nowhere. AlphaGo’s win in 2016 jolted China’s tech sector, and in 2017 Beijing elevated AI to national priority under the New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan — seeding years of state and private investment. Domestic tech giants and startups have since rolled out consumer-facing models, including Baidu (百度)’s Ernie Bot and a raft of newer entrants. Reportedly, U.S.-led export controls on advanced chips have complicated access to top hardware, accelerating China’s push for homegrown cloud, chip, and data‑center capacity.

Everyday tradeoffs

The portraits Sixth Tone collected capture both convenience and unease. The schoolboy praises instant creative feedback but worries about overreliance; a retired teacher finds companionship in a rented robot because family are far away. Users appreciate time saved and new creative possibilities, yet many also note hallucinations, misplaced trust in confident answers, and the friction of learning when tools disappear.

What this means

For Western readers, the dispatch is a reminder that China’s AI moment is social as well as technological: policy, industry strategy, and everyday life are tightly interwoven. Beijing is now trying to balance rapid deployment with tighter oversight of content and data. The human stories in Sixth Tone’s series make the stakes plain: these systems are reshaping how people work, learn, and seek connection — but they also raise familiar questions about trust, dependence, and who controls the underlying technology.