The AI Hype Train Has Stalled in China

Building his own large language model (LLM) is out of the realm of possibility for startup founders like Zhang Haiwei. He'd need hundreds of millions of dollars, and he'd be competing with China's internet giants, who have a long head start. The likes of Baidu and IFlyTek have been working on LLMs--the foundation of artificial intelligence systems that can mimic human intelligence--for years, long before the current AI boom took off. Instead, Zhang's motion-capture startup, Chingmu, is using OpenAI's models trained with its own data to analyze how people and objects move, to use in animation and sports training. "My view of this year is involution," Zhang says, applying a popular term in China which describes a cycle of manic competition that leads to everyone working harder and harder for fewer rewards.