Within an hour of landing in Shanghai, I was sitting in the back of a Didi cab while the driver pleaded with me to game the company’s algorithm. Didi is the “Uber of China” and has a ubiquitous footprint in the country, dispatching tens of millions of rides per day. Could I cancel the ride and pay him directly through WeChat?

落地上海不到一小时，我坐在一辆滴滴的后排，司机正恳求我帮他钻公司算法的空子。滴滴是“中国版优步”，在中国几乎无处不在，每天要派出数千万单行程。他问我能不能取消订单，然后直接通过微信转账给他。

There was an oversupply of drivers competing for too few fares, he explained. After dropping me off, he would be sent straight back to the airport, where he would have to wait for hours for another pickup. If I canceled, he could take a place near the front of the line. “I hope you understand,” he said. “I’ve got an older and a younger generation to support.”

他解释说，现在司机太多，而活儿太少。把我送到目的地之后，系统会立刻把他派回机场，而他又得等上好几个小时，才能接到下一单。如果我取消订单，他就可以排到队伍的前面。“希望你能理解，”他说。“我上有老、下有小。”

The driver’s plight reminded me of the DoorDash workers in the United States whose earnings are controlled by optimized dispatch systems, or the Amazon Flex workers who compete for scarce delivery blocks, never certain when the next job will come.

这位司机的困境让我想起了美国的DoorDash送餐员——他们的收入受到优化调度系统的控制；还有亚马逊Flex的司机，他们争抢有限的配送时段，永远不确定下一份工作何时到来。

I have spent years reporting and living in both the United States and China and wrote a book chronicling the history and evolution of the Chinese internet. Moving between the two countries, I’ve been struck by how they have come to mirror and resemble each other. There is a shared sense of precarity that lies beneath the envy and distrust: the technological future is taking shape at vertiginous speed yet its promise is not shared by all.

多年来，我在美中两国生活、做报道，还出版了一本关于中国互联网历史与演变的书。往返两国间，我惊讶地发现，它们竟已变得如此相似、如出一辙。在羡慕与猜忌之下，隐藏着一种共同的不安全感：技术的未来正以令人眩晕的速度成形，而它所许诺的红利，并非人人有份。

The growth of artificial intelligence has been presented as a rivalry between two fundamentally different systems. America commands capital and chips while China marshals engineering talent and manufacturing prowess. America holds an edge in building software — enterprise tools and cloud platforms. China leads in hardware — humanoids and autonomous vehicles. America pushes ahead with frontier models, with its artificial intelligence labs making moonshot bets to build a superintelligence. China focuses on scale and diffusion, with its tech firms embedding A.I. as quickly as possible in every sector of society.

人工智能的发展一直被描绘成两种根本不同体制之间的较量。美国掌握着资本和芯片；而中国则调动工程人才和制造实力。美国在构建软件（企业工具和云平台）方面占据优势；而中国则在硬件领域领先（人形机器人和自动驾驶汽车）。美国在前沿模型上发力，其人工智能实验室豪赌超级智能的打造；中国则专注于规模和普及，其科技公司尽可能迅速地将人工智能嵌入社会的各个领域。

We’ve been told that the ultimate prize in A.I. is the achievement of artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I. The country that figures this out, the theory holds, will establish world dominance through turbocharged economic and military power. In podcasts and political speeches — shaped by Silicon Valley executives and Washington policy wonks — the United States and China are almost always “battling,” “competing,” or “locked” in this race. China is years behind, no, months behind; it’s pulling ahead; it’s winning; it’s losing, it’s racing toward A.G.I., not racing toward A.G.I.; or it’s racing on a different track.

我们一直被灌输这样一种观念：人工智能的终极目标是实现通用人工智能(AGI)。理论上讲，谁搞定了AGI，谁就能通过经济与军事力量的双重飞跃确立全球霸主地位。在播客和政治演讲中——由硅谷高管和华盛顿的政策专家塑造的叙事里——美中几乎总是在这场竞赛中“较量”、“竞争”或“胶着”。中国落后数年——不对，是落后数月；它正迎头赶上；它要赢了；它输了；它正朝着AGI全力冲刺——不对，它并没有冲向AGI；又或者，它其实是在另一条赛道上奔跑。

The story of the race blew up last year after the introduction of DeepSeek R1, a Chinese open-source model that reportedly rivaled U.S. frontier models at a fraction of the cost. A wave of “China envy” overtook U.S. tech leaders who marveled at China’s speed in building bridges, high-speed trains and advanced prototypes. Marc Andreessen warned that the United States must reindustrialize or fall behind a world of “Chinese robots.”

去年，DeepSeek R1横空出世后彻底引爆这场竞赛的叙事——据称，中国的这款开源模型以极低的成本达到了美国顶尖模型的水平。一股“羡慕中国”的情绪随即席卷美国科技界，他们惊叹于中国建造桥梁、高铁和先进原型机的速度。马克·安德森警告说，美国必须再工业化，否则就会在“中国机器人”主导的世界里落败。

The leftist influencer Hasan Piker traveled to China in 2025, a copy of Mao Zedong’s quotations in hand, to see what America might “adopt and emulate.” The popular YouTuber Darren Watkins, known as IShowSpeed, streamed his trip to Shenzhen, where he danced with humanoids and ordered KFC by drone. Just as Chinese people were once transfixed by American consumer abundance — its shopping malls and sprawling suburbs — Americans have become obsessed with China’s robots and manufacturing power.

左翼网红哈桑·派克在2025年手持一本毛主席语录前往中国，想看看美国可以“借鉴与效仿”之处。知名YouTube博主IShowSpeed（本名达伦·沃特金斯）直播了他的深圳之行，他在那里与人形机器人共舞，还体验了无人机送来的肯德基。正如中国人曾经对美国消费主义的丰盛景象心驰神往——那些购物中心和庞大的郊区——如今，美国人却开始痴迷中国机器人与制造业实力。

But looking past the headlines and the highlight reels, you can see the sharp divide in both countries brought on by A.I. Those who build and bankroll the technology speak of the future as a promise to be profited from, an opportunity to be exploited. In Silicon Valley, college dropouts talk of A.I. tackling climate change and curing disease. Researchers are courted with nine-figure salaries like N.B.A. stars, and roadside billboards call on residents to “Supercharge your A.I.” and “Stop Hiring Humans.” Tech workers have earnestly adopted China’s infamous “996” work schedule: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. They are hustling hard and “locking in” to ensure that they emerge as the rich and powerful victors of the A.I. gold rush.

但抛开头条新闻和精剪短视频，你会发现人工智能在两国都造成了深刻的分裂。那些创造并资助技术的人把未来视为一种可以获利的承诺、一个可以被利用的机会。在硅谷，辍学创业的年轻人大谈人工智能如何应对气候变化、攻克疾病。研究人员像NBA球星一样，被九位数的酬劳争抢，路边的广告牌呼吁民众“为你的AI加足马力”和“停止雇用人类”。科技从业者甚至认真采纳了中国臭名昭著的“996”工作制：早九晚九，每周六天。他们拼命工作、“锁定状态”，只为确保自己能在这场人工智能淘金热中笑到最后，成为富贵赢家。

China’s tech hubs are driven by a similar sense of urgency. In Beijing’s Zhongguancun, known as China’s Silicon Valley, office towers stay lit deep into the night as A.I. lab employees hustle to beat their rivals across the road. Companies poach one another’s star engineers while freelance coders burn through tens of thousands of Claude tokens to vibecode products. The start-up founders hunt for what they call the fengkou or “wind vent” — an opportunity that, if seized at the right moment, can propel an entrepreneur straight to fortune. They study translations of Peter Thiel’s “Zero to One” and lionize Elon Musk because, as one tech worker told me, “He moves quickly, his execution is crazy and he can really deliver stuff.”

中国的科技中心同样被紧迫感驱动。在北京被称为中国硅谷的中关村，写字楼灯火通明直至深夜，人工智能实验室的员工正在奋力击败马路对面的对手。企业互相挖角明星工程师，而自由职业的码农们消耗着数以万计的Claude代币来进行氛围编程，快速搞出产品。创业公司创始人寻找他们口中的“风口”——一个如果在正确的时机抓住，就能让企业家一夜致富的机会。他们研读彼得·蒂尔的《从0到1》(Zero to One)的中译本，并把埃隆·马斯克奉为偶像，正如一位科技工作者告诉我的，“他行动迅速，执行力疯狂，而且真的能把东西做出来。”

China’s most recent wind vent was “raising lobsters” — a shorthand for training the free, open-source A.I. agent OpenClaw. Nearly 1,000 people, from amateur coders to housewives, lined up outside the tech giant Tencent’s headquarters to install the software on their devices. Users claimed that OpenClaw could kick-start side hustles and double stock returns; parents bought “lobster installation services” for their grade school children to keep up with their peers. Tech companies raced to monetize this anxiety, charging users for cloud servers and software access. “This is not ‘embracing the future,’” one disillusioned user on RedNote described the OpenClaw craze. “It’s ‘being harvested by the future.’”

中国最近的一个风口是“养龙虾”——这是对训练免费开源人工智能代理OpenClaw的戏称。从业余程序员到家庭主妇，近千人在科技巨头腾讯总部外排队，给自己的设备安装该软件。用户声称，OpenClaw能帮忙搞副业、让股票回报翻倍；家长们甚至为自己上小学的孩子购买“龙虾安装服务”，生怕孩子落后于同龄人。科技公司竞相利用这种焦虑变现，向用户收取云服务器和软件使用费。“这不是‘拥抱未来’，”小红书上一个感到失望的用户这样形容OpenClaw，“这是‘被未来收割’。”

Farther south in Shenzhen, China’s hardware capital, start-ups boast of operating at “Shenzhen speed” and have been embedding A.I. into everything from coffee makers to construction cranes. At a high-tech fair in the city, hosted in 20 halls the size of airport hangars, I walked by stalls advertising A.I. pianos, A.I. beef noodle makers, A.I. holographic tour guides and A.I. English tutors. I sat down in front of an A.I.-powered traditional Chinese medicine doctor that scanned my tongue and delivered a diagnosis. A crowd gathered around a boxing ring, cheering on a pair of sparring humanoids made by the robotics giant Unitree.

再往南，在中国硬件之都深圳，创业公司自豪地宣称自己以“深圳速度”运转，竞相将人工智能植入从咖啡机到工程吊车的一切设备之中。在这座城市举办的一个高科技博览会上（展厅多达20个，每个都像飞机库那么大），我走过一个个展位，看到了AI钢琴、AI牛肉面机、AI全息导游和AI英语家教。我在一台AI中医前坐下，它扫描了我的舌头，然后给出了诊断。一群人围着一个拳击台，为宇树科技制造的一对正在对擂的人形机器人欢呼喝彩。

“It’s a highly competitive environment right now,” a Shenzhen software engineer told me. “I feel like if I stop, I’ll be left behind.” His anxiety is not new. Unstable work situations and economic insecurity long predate the current A.I. boom. But A.I. has supercharged those anxieties and made them much harder to contest.

 “现在的环境竞争非常激烈，”一位深圳的软件工程师告诉我。“我觉得一旦停下来，就会被抛在后面。”他的焦虑并不新鲜。不稳定的工作状况和经济上的不安全感早在当前的人工智能热潮之前就已存在。但人工智能加剧了这些焦虑，也使得人们更难与之抗衡。

A parallel set of memes has emerged to capture the sense of powerlessness. In the United States, the Silicon Valley tech elite identify as “high agency,” while the rest of us are “bots” condemned to the “permanent underclass.” In China, ordinary workers describe themselves as shechu (“corporate cattle”) and jiabangou (“overtime dogs.”) These same workers have long used the viral term “involution” to capture the feeling of being trapped in a cycle of meaningless competition. In both countries, those disaffected by A.I. identify with the gaming meme of the “NPC” or “non-player character.” They feel like the background role in someone else’s video game, existing only to fill the world but not to shape it.

一系列平行的网络迷因应运而生，捕捉到这种无力感。在美国，硅谷科技精英自诩拥有“高自主性”，而我们其余的人则是注定沦为“永久底层”的“机器人”。在中国，普通打工人将自己描绘成“社畜”和“加班狗”。同样是这些工人，长期以来一直用“内卷”这个爆红词汇来表达那种被困在无意义竞争循环中的感觉。在这两个国家，对人工智能感到不满的人都把自己比作游戏中的“NPC”（也就是“非玩家角色”）。他们觉得自己就像是别人电子游戏里的背景角色，存在的意义仅仅是为了填充这个世界，而不是去塑造它。

In 2025, a group of A.I. researchers from the United States, Canada and Europe coined the term “gradual disempowerment” to describe a future in which ever more capable A.I. would quietly erode human agency. The technology would steer our core institutions with little regard for human values. Though framed as a future risk, to someone who has been observing the United States and China closely, it already felt like a diagnosis of the present day.

2025年，一群来自美国、加拿大和欧洲的人工智能研究人员创造了“渐进式失权”一词，用来描述未来能力日益强大的人工智能将如何悄无声息地侵蚀人类的能动性。这项技术将主导我们的核心机构，却几乎不顾及人类的价值观。尽管这被描绘成一种未来的风险，但对于一直密切观察中美两国的人来说，这感觉已经像是对当下的诊断。

The knowledge workers of both countries feel the surveillance presence of the technology. A.I. is now used in decisions to hire and fire employees. It tracks attendance at work, predicts an employee’s growth potential, flags “idle hours” and enforces discipline.

两国的知识工作者都感受到了这种技术带来的监控压力。如今，人工智能被用于员工雇佣和解雇的决策。它追踪工作出勤率，预测员工的成长潜力，标记“闲散时间”，并执行纪律管理。

Outside the office, both Chinese and Americans have become enamored with A.I. as a source of frictionless companionship and emotional validation, with companies now monetizing emotional intimacy at scale. Over 70 percent of American teenagers report using chatbots as companions, nearly one in eight for mental health support.

在办公室之外，中美两国民众都开始迷恋人工智能，将其视为提供无摩擦陪伴和情感认同的源泉，而企业现在正大规模地将情感亲密关系变现。超过70%的美国青少年报告说他们使用聊天机器人作为陪伴者，近八分之一的人将其作为心理健康支持。

Similarly, in China, one survey found that nearly half of young Chinese had used an A.I. chatbot to discuss their mental health. In a country where living alone is quickly becoming the norm — with single-person households expected to possibly reach 200 million by 2030 — A.I. companions have emerged as a quick fix to a growing loneliness epidemic.

同样，在中国，一项调查发现，近一半的中国年轻人曾使用人工智能聊天机器人讨论自己的心理健康问题。在一个独居正迅速成为常态的国家——预计到2030年，单身家庭数量可能达到2亿——面对日益严重的孤独流行病，人工智能伴侣已成为一种速效解药。

This year, the app “Are You Dead?” — which alerts a contact if a user fails to check-in — has been wildly popular. (Its Chinese name, Sileme, is a morbid play on the name of the popular food delivery app Ele.me, meaning “Are You Hungry?”) But “Are You Dead?” addresses a serious need: the growing number of people who are living solo, far away from family and deprived of social support, and who are afraid of disappearing without being noticed.

今年，一款名为“死了么”的应用程序非常受欢迎——如果用户未能在规定时间内打卡，它就会向联系人发出警报——这个中文名字是对流行外卖应用“饿了么”的一种略带病态的戏仿。但是，“死了么”解决了一个严肃的需求：越来越多的人独自生活，远离家人，缺乏社会支持，他们害怕自己悄然离世却无人察觉。

The people of both countries are turning toward the spiritual for solace and agency in a world accelerating out of their control. The 20-somethings of America check astrology apps like Co-Star, part of a $3 billion dollar industry. Some in Gen Z are rediscovering Christianity, and religious conservatism has re-entered public life. In China, fortunetelling bars have popped up in cities, astrology apps like Cece are going viral and young people are consulting DeepSeek to predict their futures.

在一个正在加速失控的世界里，两国民众都在转向精神层面寻求慰藉和掌控感。20多岁的美国人热衷查看Co-Star这样的占星应用，这已成为一个价值30亿美元的产业。一些Z世代正在重新发现基督教，宗教保守主义重新进入了公共生活。在中国，占卜酒吧在各大城市涌现，像“测测”这样的占星应用正在走红，年轻人们甚至向DeepSeek请教，预测自己的未来。

Last fall in Beijing, I found myself at a dinner with a group of women in their 20s and 30s whose conversation circled familiar anxieties: shrinking job prospects (and recruitment horror stories), disenchantment with dating (none of them wanted to get married or have children), and a growing fascination with bazi, tarot and the occult. When I asked one guest about tarot’s rising appeal, she answered simply, “No one turns to tarot when times are good.”

去年秋天在北京，我参加了一场晚宴，同席的是一群二三十岁的女性，她们的谈话围绕着熟悉的焦虑：日益萎缩的就业前景（以及招聘中的恐怖故事），对约会的幻想破灭（她们中没有一个人想结婚生子），以及对八字、塔罗牌和玄学日益增长的痴迷。我问一位客人，为什么塔罗牌越来越受欢迎，她简单地回答说：“时运好的时候，没人会去算塔罗牌。”

When the future loses its promise, the past becomes a refuge. Both societies have seen a surge of nostalgia, a longing for a time remembered as simpler and more stable. Many Chinese idolize rural vloggers such as the celebrity YouTuber Li Ziqi, who rose to viral fame during the pandemic by sharing videos of her self-sufficient, pastoral life in the Sichuan countryside. You can see the same dynamics in the popularity of the tradwife Instagrammer known as Ballerina Farm, who documents her Utah homestead, milking cows and making doughnuts from scratch for her eight children. Both of those women live off the grid and embody an imagined idyll where chatbots and corporations do not exist.

当未来失去承诺时，过去就成了避难所。两个社会都出现了怀旧热潮，人们渴望回到记忆中那个更简单、更稳定的时代。许多中国人崇拜乡村视频博主，比如著名YouTuber李子柒，她在疫情期间因为分享自己在四川乡下自给自足的田园生活视频而爆红。在Instagram上以Ballerina Farm为名大受欢迎的一位传统主妇博主身上，也能看到同样的现象，她记录了自己在犹他州的农场生活，挤牛奶，亲手为她的八个孩子制作甜甜圈。这两位女性都过着与世隔绝的生活，体现了一种想象中的田园诗篇——在那里，聊天机器人和企业都不复存在。

Nostalgia also has a dark side, encouraging the rise of once fringe, illiberal ideas into the mainstream. This has been underway in China for years, with its influencers and ideologues rejecting liberal ideas and drifting toward a conservative centralized authority. In the United States, we see the growing influence of pundits like Curtis Yarvin, who argues that liberal democracy should be dismantled in favor of a C.E.O.-led monarchy and whose ideas have found an audience among both America’s tech and political elite, from Peter Thiel to JD Vance.

怀旧也有其黑暗的一面，它助长了曾经处于边缘的非自由主义思想步入主流。这在中国已经发生多年，网红和理论家们拒绝自由主义思想，逐渐走向保守的中央集权体制。在美国，我们看到像柯蒂斯·雅文这样的评论人士影响力日益增长，他主张应该废除自由民主制，代之以由首席执行官领导的君主制，而他的思想在美国的科技和政治精英中都找到了受众，从彼得·蒂尔到 JD·万斯。

Faced with such a system, the simplest response is to surrender: accept one’s fate, sink into the apathy of inevitable decline and, in the words of Chinese netizens, “let it rot.” It’s easy to flee the friction of the real world for the comfort of our feeds and to confide in chatbots rather than friends. In doing so, we enable our leaders to leverage our fears and displace our anxieties onto the meme version of a foreign country.

面对这样一个系统，最简单的反应就是投降：接受命运，陷入对不可避免的衰退所带来的麻木之感，用中国网民的话来说，就是“摆烂”。人们很容易逃避现实世界的摩擦，躲进信息流的舒适区，向聊天机器人而不是朋友倾诉。这样一来，我们就助长了领导者利用我们的恐惧，将我们的焦虑转移到一个被网络迷因塑造的外国形象上。

Instead of addressing A.I.’s challenges in isolation, why not bring together people from all sectors of society to reclaim agency over our own lives? We can pursue collaboration, as scientists and policymakers have already begun to do. On the sidelines of the World A.I. Conference in Shanghai last summer, scientists from across the world met to address critical A.I. risks, calling for international cooperation to ensure that advanced A.I. systems remain aligned with human values.

与其孤立地应对人工智能的挑战，为什么不将社会各界人士聚集起来，重新夺回我们对自己生活的能动性呢？我们可以寻求合作，就像科学家和政策制定者已经开始做的那样。在去年夏天上海举行的世界人工智能大会场外，来自世界各地的科学家聚在一起探讨了人工智能的关键风险，呼吁国际合作，以确保先进的人工智能系统始终与人类的价值观保持一致。

Workers can band together to resist toxic work cultures at Big Tech firms that sacrifice human dignity for profit and competition. It was only in 2019 that Chinese programmers launched the 996.ICU campaign on GitHub, to protest grueling work hours. They drew support from U.S. tech workers and hundreds of tech employees worldwide, from Spain to Singapore, one of the largest online mobilizations of tech workers in history.

科技巨头为了利润和竞争而牺牲人类尊严，工人们可以团结起来抵制这种有毒的企业文化。就在2019年，中国程序员在GitHub上发起了996.ICU运动，抗议令人精疲力竭的工作时间。他们得到了美国科技工作者以及从西班牙到新加坡的全球数百名科技员工的支持，这是历史上规模最大的科技工作者在线动员之一。

Once you step back, it’s easy to see the warping effect of the U.S. vs. China race. It’s a story used to justify sprinting ahead without guardrails in the name of beating the other. By focusing on our rivalry, we have become blind to our vulnerability. Instead of fixating on who crosses the finish line first, we must work together to lift up the people that both countries have left behind.

退后一步看，我们不难发现美中竞争带来的扭曲效应。打着击败对方的旗号，这种叙事成了不要护栏、全力冲刺的借口。因为专注竞争，我们对自身的脆弱变得盲目。我们不应执迷于谁先冲过终点线，而是必须携手合作，去扶持那些被这两个国家抛在后面的人们。