潜空间幕后：杀死我的 SaaS、Jev 与 2026 年的 AI——AIE 上海特别节目

嗯，这是一期特别的播客，因为它是关于 AIE 上海的。AIE 上海是中国第一个 AIE。它由 Standard Partners 呈现，那是我们的本地合作伙伴之一。我们在全球有几个 AIE 不是我的团队运营的。而这是上海的第一个。我一直想把 AIE 带到中国。我认为有很多东西方交汇的地方，以及中国取得的很多进展需要被分享和传播到全球社区。中国对我们非常感兴趣。Latent Space 有很多中国粉丝，我会在 YouTube 屏幕上闪现几个。首先我要感谢 Mang Shao，他是我们的主要粉丝，基本上把每一集都翻译成中文，我非常感激。总的来说，我想祝贺并庆祝中国取得的进展，不仅在开源模型方面，还有机器人技术和其他很多初创公司。你们谁还记得 Manus，去年这个时候成立，然后搬到了新加坡。显然 OpenClaw 有过很大的发展，我们聊了很多关于当地整体氛围以及中国 AI 社区的规模如此不同、被采用的东西的类型，还有初创文化。人们经常听说 996，我们谈论了现实情况与像 Cognition 这样的地方相比如何。最后，我们还聊了 Latent Space 的起源故事，一些新听众可能没听过。谈谈它何时成立、为什么成立，以及我们如何运营多个节目。还有一点关于安全和对齐等等。所以这里每个人都能找到一些内容。基本上是给粉丝的，如果你关注 Latent Space 有一段时间了。如果你对 AIE 上海感兴趣，它不会直播，但我们会在某个时候发布到 YouTube 上。明天开始。所以任何在中国观看的人，我非常期待。感谢 Ming 和团队组织这一切。我还必须感谢 Hanu Leu，基本上是他启动了这件事。有几次差点没办成，但能在上海举办 AIE 并把 Latent Space 带到中国，真是太令人兴奋了。感谢观看，期待采访。

Well, this is a special podcast because it's about AIE Shanghai. AIE Shanghai is the first AIE in China. It's brought to us by Standard Partners, which is one of the local partners that we have. We have a few AIEs worldwide that my team doesn't run. And this is the first one in Shanghai. I've always wanted to bring AIE to China. I think there's a lot of east meets west and a lot of progress in China that needs to be shared and distributed among the global community. China's super interested in us. There have been many Chinese fans of the Latent Space podcast, and I'll flash a few of them up on screen here on YouTube. Primarily I want to recognize Mang Shao who is our primary fan, always translating basically every episode into Chinese, which I am super appreciative of. In general, I think I want to also congratulate and celebrate the progress that China has made, not just in open source models but in robotics and a lot of other startups. You know, who can remember Manus that was started this time last year and then moved to Singapore. And obviously OpenClaw had a big run and we talk a lot about what that's like in terms of the overall mood on the ground and how the scale of AI community is so different in China and the type of things that get adopted, as well as the startup culture. People hear a lot about 996, we talk about the reality of that versus in a place like Cognition. And finally, we also talk a little bit about the origin story of Latent Space, which some of you may not have heard if you're newer to the podcast. Talk about when it was started and why it was started and how we think about running the multiple shows that we're running. And a little bit about safety and alignment and all that other stuff. So, there's a little bit here for everyone. It's basically for the fans if you've been following the Latent Space for a while. And if you're interested in AIE Shanghai, it's not being live streamed, but we're going to post it up on YouTube at some point. It starts tomorrow. So anyone here in China who's watching this, I'm really looking forward to having it. And thanks to Ming and team for organizing all of this. I also have to shout out Hanu Leu who basically got this thing started. It nearly did not happen a few times but it's so exciting to have AIE in Shanghai and to bring Latent Space to China in general. So thanks for watching and look forward to the interview.

模型非常擅长点击你软件的每一个屏幕，然后独立复制它。哦是的。对吧。所以一旦我能访问你的软件，我就能克隆它。祝你好运。有很多从未写过一天代码的评论家。他们都说，‘啊，我预测 AGI 的时间线大概还有 2 年。你们未来都会没有工作。你需要为下一步做准备。’方便的是，下一步看起来就像他们的工作。我有自己的 Canal。我有自己的 Google Drive。我有自己的 GitHub。我是认真的。他们是如此优秀的创始人。他们生错了国家。如果他们住在美国，他们会干掉亚马逊。他们会干掉 Facebook。他们不那么富有的唯一原因就是他们住在中国。AI 末日。在整个人类历史中，当更先进的文明出现并遇到较不先进的文明时，较不先进的文明会灭绝。而这个东西的进化速度大约是我们的 1000 倍。

The models are very good at clicking through every screen of your software and then replicating it independently. Oh yeah. Right. So the moment I have access to your software, I can clone it. So good luck. There's a lot of talking heads who have never coded a single day in their lives. They're all like, 'Ah, my timeline to AGI is like 2 years away. All of you are going to have not going to have jobs in the future. You need to prepare for what's next.' Conveniently, whatever is next looks like their job. I have my own Canal. I have my own Google Drive. I have my own GitHub. I'm serious. They're such good founders. They live in the wrong country. If they live in the US, they'll kill Amazon. They'll kill like Facebook. The only reason they're not richer is they live in China. AI doom. In all of human history, when a more advanced civilization comes along and meets a less advanced civilization, the less advanced civilization goes extinct. And this thing is evolving roughly 1,000 times faster than us.

嗨，Shawn。感谢你参加这个节目。我是 Latent Space 播客的长期听众。我知道中国许多 AI 创始人和工程师也从你的工作和播客对话中学到了很多。我也很感激你今年首次把 AIE，AI 工程师大会，带到上海。我想几个月前我读了你在 Drive Forth 上的文章，关于你与硅谷的关系，你往返于新加坡和这里。我猜这就是你上次搬到硅谷时创造或发明 AI 工程师角色的原因，这也让我觉得这次你把 AIE 首次带到上海非常特别。所以请告诉我们一些你的背景以及你与 AI 的关系。

Hi, Shawn. So thank you for joining me for this show. So I've been a longtime listener for the Latent Space podcast. I know that many founders in AI engineers in China as well have already learned a lot from your work and conversations on the podcast as well. And also I'm grateful that you are bringing the AIE, the AI Engineer conference, to Shanghai the first time this year. So I think also like several months ago I read your piece actually on Drive Forth about your essay on your relationship with the Silicon Valley, you moved back and forth from Singapore and here. I guess that's why how you actually coin or invented the role of AI engineer the last time you moved to Silicon Valley and also this just makes me feel like it's very special and that this time you bring the AIE to Shanghai the first time. And so tell us a little bit about your background and your relationship with AI.

我应该纠正你一个错误。我没有把 AIE 带到上海。是上海把 AIE 带到了上海。好吧。是 Hanoa、Leu、Ming 和 Standard Partners 的那些人。所以我很感激他们，因为我们一直想在中国做点什么，但我不是中国公民，我在那里没有联系人。我认为美中双方以及中国 AI 整体上都有很多兴趣。无论我们能做什么来呈现高质量的对话，我认为中国的 AIE 可以在这方面有所帮助。所以，我的 TL;DR 是我来自新加坡。第五代新加坡人，抱歉，第五代华人，对吧？大多数新加坡人是华人占多数。我想我是来自……人们问我……哦，好中国人……所以我不知道，就像作为华人侨民的感觉，我们不知道自己的起源，因为就是混合的，没有人保留任何记录，甚至没有人知道我们的生日，有时候你知道，但第五代新加坡人在新加坡长大，去美国上大学，第一份职业在金融。我在交易、投资银行和对冲基金工作了 10 年，抱歉，8 年，然后转到科技。所以我在亚马逊和几家初创公司工作过，然后四年前成为独立角色，领导 Latent Space，发现会有 AI 工程师这个东西，然后我创办了 AIE。

I should correct you on one thing that's wrong. I did not bring AIE to Shanghai. Shanghai brought AIE to Shanghai. Okay. It's like Hanoa and Leu and Ming and those folks at Standard Partners. So I'm very grateful for them because we always wanted to do something in China but I'm not a Chinese citizen and I have no contacts or relationships there. I think that there's a lot of interest on both sides of the world on US and China, Chinese AI in general. You know, whatever we can do to surface high-quality conversations, I think that AIE in China can help there. So, my TL;DR is I'm from Singapore. Fifth generation Singaporean, sorry, fifth generation Chinese, right? Most Singaporeans are majority Chinese. I think I am from... people asked me like... oh nice Chinese... so and I don't know and like that's how it feels like to be like Chinese diaspora right like we don't know what our origins are because it's just mixed that nobody kept any records like nobody even knows our birthdays like sometimes you know but fifth generation Singapore grew and raised up in Singapore and went to the US for university and did my first career in finance. I was in trading and investment banking and hedge funds for 10 years sorry 8 years and then switched to tech. So I worked in Amazon and a few startups and then four years ago became independent role lead in space figured out that there was going to be this AI engineer thing and then I started AIE.

酷。我知道你现在有不同的角色。你在做 Latent Space 播客，写通讯，我还发现你在几家初创公司如 Cognition 等有不同的角色。

Cool. And I know that actually you have different roles right now. You're doing the Latent Space podcast, you're writing newsletters and also I find out that you have different roles in several startups like Cognition etc.

是的。

Yes. Yeah.

我只是想知道，你现在的头衔或角色是什么？在不同的地方有不同的角色吗？

I just wonder, you know, what are your current titles or roles in different, different roles?

是的，这很有趣，因为我最近不得不整理我的税务，弄清楚我有哪些收入来源。Cognition 是最大的一块。我是顾问，我仍然是 Cognition 的顾问。我曾是员工，很长一段时间。所以基本上是这样的：我有三家公司：我有 AIE，我有 Latent Space，然后我还有杂项。它曾经是 Small AI，那是我个人的创业载体。基本上被 Cognition 收购了，我在那里工作了 6 个月，然后退回来做顾问，因为 AIE 现在是一个全球会议组织，我必须担任 CEO。我不能在这里做兼职员工。Fireworks 很大，Modal 很大，Supabase 也很大。所以我认为如果你是一个硅谷影响者，或者你在开发者关系圈子里待了很长时间，这是很常见的事情。所以这就是我的专长：我既是技术人，也写作和演讲，这对很多人来说是一个很好的技能组合，因为任何初创公司都会愿意付钱让你谈论他们的东西。然后你就开始和一堆东西合作。所以这很多不是正常的职业。我实际上甚至不推荐大多数人这样做，但这就是我在生活中的角色：我可以顾问几家不同的公司，与他们合作以换取演讲，大致就是这样。

Yeah, so it's very funny because I recently had to go over my taxes, like figure out like what money do I have. So cognition is the biggest one. I'm an adviser, I'm still an adviser to cognition. I was an employee for a long time, for a while. So basically the idea was, I have three companies: I have AIE, I have Latent Space, and then I have miscellaneous. It used to be Small AI, which is my personal sort of startup vehicle. Basically got acquired into cognition, worked there for 6 months, and then stepped back to be an adviser because AIE is now, you know, a global conference organization and I had to be CEO. I couldn't be part-time employee part-time here. Fireworks is very big, Modal is very big, Supabase, um. So I think it's a very common thing if you're a Silicon Valley influencer or you've been in developer relation circles for a long time. So that is my specialty, in which I am technical but I also write and speak, and that is a good combination of skills to have for people because any startup will want to pay you to like talk about their stuff. And I think you know then you start working with a bunch of things. So like a lot of this is not a normal career. I actually don't even recommend it for most people, but it is my role in life that I can advise a few different companies and work with them in exchange for talk, and that's the rough idea.

我想更深入地聊聊 Latent Space 的早期，因为我知道我写过——读过你的文章，你开始公开学习，然后告诉所有人你早期学到的东西，然后你觉得需要把与不同研究者的在线对话转移，然后成为 Latent Space 的早期对话，可能只是——

I just want to deep dive a bit more into the early days of Latent Space because I know I wrote—read your essay that you start to, you know, learn in public and then tell everyone what you learned in the early days, and then you felt the need you need to, you know, transfer the conversation you talk with different researchers online and then become the early some conversation of the Latent Space probably just—

你知道，是的，谈谈过去的日子你是如何建立 Latent Space 的——你把两件不同的事情混在一起了，对吧？第一件事是公开学习的原则，这是我在离开金融界进入科技界时意识到的。为什么科技界对我好得多，进展顺利得多？感觉舒服多了。对于对这两个领域都感兴趣的人来说，核心原因——两者都是高薪工作、有声望的工作——区别在于金融是零和的，对吧？如果我知道某事并告诉你，那个真相就失去了价值，对吧？但在科技界，大多数事情是正和的：如果我知道某事并告诉你，它会增加价值。对于从金融转向科技的人来说，这是一个非常不同的范式，它非常解放。这意味着人们会登上舞台，开源他们的工作，分享他们的代码，搞砸了，分享他们搞砸了。在金融界，不——你想假装你从未搞砸过，一切都是绝密的。我认为这是我真正铭记在心的。我想我意识到——哦，我发生的另一件事是我的第一份工作在 Two Sigma，那仍然在金融界，但我在软件工程方面，我意识到我有一个糟糕的老板。然后我变得非常无聊，我开始做大量的写作和演讲，因为在工作中我无法做我想做的事情，因为他们不让我做。但显然因为我在工作中太无聊了，然后我把所有精力都投入到工作之外的事情上，然后显然那件事起飞了，因为没有其他人在做那件事。相比之下，这就变成了你能够选择自己的老板，对吧？就像大多数人有工作时，他们加入一家公司，被分配一个老板，被分配一个团队。大多数时候你甚至不知道团队好不好，然后你发现它不好。你被困住了。当你公开学习时，你实际上可以选择自己的老板，你选择——你喜欢为自己工作，选择自己的老板，所有这些事情。所以这非常非常好。我想快进到 Latent Space：那是在 Stable Diffusion 出现时创建的。这是在 ChatGPT 之前。当 Stable Diffusion 出现时，我在一家进展不太顺利的初创公司。它叫 Airbyte。它今天仍然做得不错，但没有人会称它为火箭飞船——这是客观事实，我会对创始人这么说。但因为我当时想，好吧，我上过一些机器学习课程，但我不是 AI 专家。我对这个领域如此感兴趣。我进入这个领域的唯一方式就是公开学习。所以我就这样做了。我开了一个博客，我开始分析、学习，并把我的学习写进博客。起初没有人会注意到。但最终如果你开始谈论人们的东西——比如实际上 Emad Mostaque，他是 Stability AI 的 CEO，该公司创建了 Stable Diffusion，这也是我开博客的原因，他读了分析 Stable Diffusion 的博客文章，他说这很好。我认为那项工作基本上是我学习 AI 的过程，过去 5 年只是磨砺并写下来。我认为那真的是——你知道，你不够格。我今天可能仍然不够格，但我比 4 年前稍微更合格了。所以那很好。我认为那是你唯一能学习的方式。就像我认为，嗯，尤其是在亚洲文化中，非常强调资历主义。

You know, yeah, talking about the past days how you build up Latent Space and—there's kind of two different things that you're mixing together, right? The first thing is the principle of learning in public, which is something I realized when I left finance and I worked in tech. Why is tech so much better, going so much better for me? It feels so much more comfortable. And the very core reason for people who are interested in both fields—both are high paying jobs, prestigious jobs—the difference is finance is zero sum, right? If I know something and I tell you, that truth loses value, right? But in tech, most stuff is positive sum: if I know something and I tell you, it increases value. And that's a very different paradigm for people who are crossing over from finance to tech, and it's very liberating. It means that people will get on stage and they open source their work, they share their code, they screw up, they share that they screwed up. In finance, no—you want to pretend that you never screwed up and everything is top secret. And I think that is something that I really took to heart. And I think I realized that—oh, the other thing that happened to me was my first job was at Two Sigma, which is still in finance, but I was on the software engineering side, and I realized that I had a bad boss. So then I got really bored and I started to do a lot of writing and speaking because at work I wasn't able to do the things that I wanted to do because they didn't let me. But obviously because I was so bored at work and then I put all my energy into the stuff outside of work, then obviously that thing took off because no one else is doing that. And by comparison, that becomes you being able to choose your own boss, right? Like most people when they have a job, they join a company, they are assigned a boss, they are assigned a team. Most of the time you don't even know if the team is good or not, and then you find out it's not good. You're stuck. When you learn in public, you actually can choose your own boss, you choose—you like work for yourself, choose your own boss, all those things. So it's very, very good. I think fast forward to Latent Space: that was created when Stable Diffusion happened. This is before ChatGPT. When Stable Diffusion happened, I was in a startup that was not going very well. It's called Airbyte. It's still doing okay today, but nobody would call it a rocket ship—that's just objectively true, and I would say that to the founders. But because I was like, okay, I did like some machine learning courses but I'm not an AI expert. I am so interested in this field. There's only one way for me to get into the field, which is to learn in public. And so that's what I did. I started a blog and I started analyzing and learning and writing up my learnings into a blog. And at first nobody will notice. But then eventually if you start talking about people's things—like literally Emad Mostaque, who's the CEO of Stability AI, which created Stable Diffusion, which is the reason I started the blog, read the blog post analyzing Stable Diffusion and he said this is good. And I think that work was basically me learning AI like the past 5 years of just grinding and writing about that. And I think that is really the—you know, like you are not qualified. And I'm still probably not that qualified today, but I'm a bit more qualified than I used to be 4 years ago. So that's good. And I think that's the only way you can learn. Like I think, um, especially in Asian cultures, there's a lot of emphasis on credentialism.

是的。

Yeah.

对吧，你需要那张纸。你需要一些资格。如果不是学位，就是证书。如果不是证书，你必须有过工作才能做。你怎么得到工作？你必须有一个学位。就像一个无限循环，基本上意味着当你 16 岁时你需要决定你一生想做什么。但我觉得生活比那灵活得多。如果你愿意，你可以选择转向。你只需要非常坚持，并且意识到仅仅因为你非常努力，你并不有权获胜。你必须非常努力并且优秀。我认为很多人尝试，很多人失败，他们会说，‘为什么没有成功？’嗯，你不够好。太糟糕了。但有些人尝试，他们努力，他们有判断力。他们真的在实质性的东西上工作，而不是非实质性的东西。这就是公开学习通常会发生的事情。所以是的，那个开始——他们开始了 Latent Space，然后非常非常有趣的是 Latent Space 只是一个博客。它只是——Stars 只是一个博客。

Like right, like you need that piece of paper. You need like some qualification. Like if it's not a degree, it's a certification. If it's not a certification, you must have had a job to do it. And how do you get the job? You must have a degree. Like it's just like an infinite loop of things that basically mean that when you're 16 you need to decide what you want to do in life. But like I think life is a lot more flexible than that. And you can choose to pivot if you want to. You just have to be really persistent and also realize that just because you worked very hard, you're not entitled to win. You have to work very hard and be good. I think a lot of people try, a lot of people fail and they're like, 'Why didn't it fail?' Well, you're not good. Too bad. But some people try and they worked and they had judgment. They really did work on substantial things rather than insubstantial things. And that's what generally happens with learning in public. So yeah, that start—they started Latent Space and then very, very interestingly Latent Space was just a blog. It was just—Stars was just a blog.

对，就是那个博客。除了“swyx 写 AI”这件事之外，我没有别的想法，就这样。但我们碰巧办了一些活动、一些聚会。你知道，ChatGPT 出来了，显然是有史以来最令人兴奋的事。然后我们想办一些黑客松，就办了一场黑客松，而 AI 工程师这个想法正是在那场黑客松上诞生的。

Yes, just the blog. I had no other idea apart from this is swyx writing about AI, that's it. But we happened to host some events, some gatherings. Like, you know, ChatGPT came out, obviously the most exciting thing of all time. And then we wanted to host some hackathons, so we hosted a hackathon, and at the hackathon that's where the idea for AI engineer came about.

那是一种顿悟——其实是一位女士走过来对我说：“我全力投入 AI，但我不是技术出身，我能做什么？”我意识到，简单的答案是：和工程师相比，她什么都做不了。工程师即将比非工程师强大得多，因为工程师可以同时控制 100 个 AI 并给它们编程，而非技术人员最多能做的就是把提示词写得更好。

Which is the realization — it actually was this woman that came up to me and said, "I'm all in on AI, I'm nontechnical, what can I do?" And I realized that the simple answer is, compared to an engineer, she can do nothing. Engineers are about to be so much more powerful than the non-engineer because engineers can control 100 AIs at once and program it, whereas the maximum that a nontechnical person can do is prompt better.

然后我就想，哦，这我好像见过。所以在我整个职业生涯中，我见过一些“不显赫”的角色逐渐职业化的过程。我说的“不显赫”是什么意思？做提示词工程师并不显赫。显赫的是训练大语言模型。你做预训练、做后训练，你得读个博士，你搞出 GRPO 这种花哨的算法，你还做流形超连接，也就是 DeepSeek 做的那套。

Then I was like, oh, I think I have seen this before. So throughout my career I've seen the professionalization of roles that are non-prestigious. So what do I mean by non-prestigious? It is not prestigious to be a prompt engineer. The prestigious thing is you train large language models. You do pre-training, you do post-training, you have to go through a PhD, you make fancy algorithms like GRPO, and you do manifold hyperconnections, which is what DeepSeek does.

那很显赫，而且会一直显赫下去。但我觉得人们矫枉过正的地方在于，把除此之外、不是那种机器学习研究的一切都看成毫无价值。这其实是不对的。你确实需要构建 harness，而 harness 并不要求你懂高等数学，也不要求你有大量超算经验。你只需要是一个非常优秀的软件工程师，思想足够开放，懂得如何把 AI 放进传统软件代码里——那就是 harness。

That's prestigious and that continues to be prestigious. But I think the overcorrection that people have is looking at everything else that is not that ML research and saying it is worthless. That actually was untrue. You actually do want to build harnesses, and harnesses do not require you to know advanced math or have a lot of experience in supercomputing. You just need to be a very good software engineer that is open-minded enough to understand how to put AI into traditional software code, which is a harness.

当时我们还没有 harness 这个词，但很清楚的是，工程师能做普通人做不到的这类事情，而且他们会很抢手。不仅如此——公司想招这类人，开发者想成为这类人。他们想要一个词来称呼自己。所以你要做的就是找出那个正确的词，最简单的就是 AI 工程师，把它做成一个行业、一门学科。这就是我所做的。

We didn't have the word for harness at the time, but it was very clear that engineers would be able to do things like this that normal people cannot, and they would be in demand. And not only that — companies are trying to hire this kind of people, and developers want to become this kind of people. They want a term to call themselves. So all you have to do is figure out the right term, which is the simplest one: AI engineer, and make it an industry, make it a discipline. And so that's what I did.

其实我可以跟你分享一个插曲。在中国，就在你刚提到 Stable Diffusion 开源那件事的时候，当时中国最大的 AI 社区 WaytoAGI，其实也是从一群对 Stable Diffusion 技术有抱负、有热情的人开始的，他们想转向图像生成，它也成了 ComfyUI 的基础。你一定很熟悉 ComfyUI。

Actually I can share with you a side story. In China, at the time when you just mentioned the event of Stable Diffusion, the open-sourcing of Stable Diffusion — it was actually at that time that the largest AI community in China, which is called WaytoAGI, actually started from a bunch of people who were ambitious or lovers of that Stable Diffusion technology and wanted to transform into image generation, and it also became the foundation of ComfyUI. You're definitely familiar with ComfyUI.

是的。

Yes.

ComfyUI——我们请他来上过播客。

ComfyUI — we've had him on the podcast.

对，对，对。在中国也是。

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And in China as well.

那他们用 ComfyUI 吗？

So do they use ComfyUI?

用。

Yes.

哇。

Oh wow.

而且他们逐渐邀请更多人在公开场合学习，在在线文档上做更多贡献，那些文档在飞书（Lark）上、在网页上。所以每个人都贡献自己的知识，分享关于 Stable Diffusion 和 ComfyUI 的用例，然后它越来越大。我想现在这个在线社区大概有一百万用户在一起学习，几百万用户一起学习。所以它也成了中国最大的 AI 社区。

And also they gradually invite more people to learn in public and contribute more on online documents, which is on Lark — Feishu — on the web. So everybody contributes their knowledge, shares their use cases about Stable Diffusion and ComfyUI, and then it becomes larger and larger. I think right now the online community has around a million users learning together, several million users learning together. So it became the largest AI community in China as well.

所以我觉得那也是在同一时间发生的。我想你开始感觉到我们需要一个新词来称呼这类工程师，然后你就发表了那篇关于 AI 工程师的文章。

So that's also, I think, that happened at exactly the same time. I think you start to feel like we need a new word for this type of engineer, and then you just published the essay on the AI engineer.

对。我觉得人们——这里有一些替代方案。我觉得通过当时人们尝试的那些替代叫法，你能最好地理解这件事。当时有 AI Tinkerers，那是另一个重要的社区。我跟 Joe 和 Alex 很熟。然后有人说 LLM 工程师，或者应用 AI 工程师，或者所有这些别的说法。我觉得基本上你得聚焦在人们想要的那个职位头衔上。我觉得对我们来说那非常关键。

Yeah. I think people — so here are some of the alternatives. I think you can best understand it by the alternatives that people were trying at the time. So there was AI Tinkerers, which is another significant community. I know Joe and Alex well. And then there were people saying LLM engineers, or applied AI engineer, or all these other terminologies. And I think basically you have to focus on the job title that people want to have. And I think that for us that was very key.

我觉得这是我从 James Clear 那里学到的。写《原子习惯》的是 James Clear 吗？我想是的。我忘了作者关系，但我想是 James Clear。基本上，如果你想深入理解某人或与某人建立连接，你不能在对方的工作层面建立连接，也不能在对方的活动或爱好之类的层面建立连接。而是要在他们的身份层面——比如，你是谁？你渴望成为什么？如果你能给他们一条通往更好自我的路径，你就能围绕这个建立社区。

And I think I picked this up from James Clear. Is it James Clear that wrote Atomic Habits? I think so. I forget the authorship relationship, but I think it's James Clear. Basically, if you want to deeply understand or connect with somebody, you have to connect with them not on the level of their job, not on the level of their activities or hobbies or whatever. It is their identity — like, who are you? What do you aspire to be? If you can give them the path towards being the better version of themselves, then you can build a community around that.

所以很多非 AI 的人想进入 AI，那他们的路径是什么？你给他们一个能赚钱的职位头衔——对，然后他们就会忠于你。所以现在世界上多了很多 AI 工程师。

And so a lot of non-AI people wanted to be AI, and what is the path for them? Well, you give them a job title that pays money — like, yes, then they will be loyal to you. So yeah, now there's a lot more AI engineers in the world.

对。接着追问一下，也是出于我自己的兴趣。我知道作为 AI 工程师有很多工作要做。我知道你提到了 harness——AI 领域发生了很多发展。那你觉得 AI 工程师这个角色也演变了吗，还是和你三年前刚开始做这件事时提到的有所不同？

Yeah. And to follow up, just to my interest as well. So I know that there are a lot of works to do as an AI engineer. I know you mentioned harness — a lot of developments happen in AI. So do you think the role of the AI engineer has evolved as well, or is it different from what you just mentioned, like three years ago when you started this work?

说实话，它没怎么变。我觉得变的是 AI 工程内部什么最热门，但这个职位头衔大体上是对的。我觉得早期是 RAG、上下文管理之类的。后来最近是编码智能体、harness 工程，也许是循环工程之类的。还有记忆等其他学科，诸如此类。

Honestly it hasn't really changed that much. I think that what's hot within AI engineering has changed, but the job title is pretty much correct. I think in the early days it used to be RAG and managing context and all that. And then more recently it's been coding agents, it's been harness engineering, it's been maybe loop engineering or whatever. There's also other disciplines of memory and all these things.

所以对那些对 AI 工程各个领域感兴趣的人，在 AI Engineer World's Fair——也就是旗舰级、最大的会议——我们有 30 个不同的分轨，讲 AI 工程师意味着什么。评估是其中一部分，多模态是其中一部分，你知道，诸如此类。所以我觉得它随着时间推移发生了转变。

So for those who are interested in all the fields of AI engineering, at AI Engineer World's Fair, which is the flagship, biggest conference, we have 30 different tracks of what it means to be an AI engineer. And eval is part of that, multimodal is part of it, you know, all that stuff. So I think it has shifted over time.

我觉得智能体工程师也许是其中之一，或者 AI 架构师。AI 工程师像是这件事的个人贡献者版本，那谁是公司层面、全公司范围的老大？AI 架构师似乎是那个新兴的称呼，指决定公司里每个人该怎么做 AI 的那个人。对，那就是 AI 架构师。然后还有所有其他的，比如 AI 设计师、AI 产品经理，诸如此类。

I think agent engineer maybe is one of them, or AI architect. So AI engineer is like the individual contributor version of this, but who is like the company-level, company-wide boss? And AI architect seems to be the emerging term for that person that decides this is how everybody in a company does AI. Yeah, that's AI architect. And then there's all the other ones like AI designer, AI PM, all these things.

所以，问题就在于谁来做这些工作、谁来写代码、谁负责检查代码？如果出了问题，你负责吗？不，你不是工程师。

So, it's just like who does that work and who writes code and who is responsible for checking that code? If something fails, are you responsible? No, you're not an engineer.

你知道，如果那个人凌晨 4 点起床去修问题，那才是工程师。

You know, if the person who wakes up at 4:00 a.m. to go fix it, that's the engineer.

对。没错。所以我们想服务那些人。这才是真正的核心。AI 的另一个问题是，有很多意见领袖，他们一天代码都没写过，但他们非常宏观，非常资深。他们会说：“哦，我是某某公司的 CTO。”但他们不碰代码。

Yeah. Right. And so, we want to serve those people. And that's the real core of it. The other problem with AI is that there's a lot of talking heads who have never coded a single day in their lives, but they are very big picture. They're very, very senior. And they're like, "Oh, I'm CTO of blah blah blah." But they don't touch code.

所以很多 AI 会议和社区都聚焦于那些人，因为他们有光鲜的头衔。但他们听起来都一样。他们都说：“哦，我预计 AGI 大概 2 年后就会到来。你们未来都会失业。你们需要为下一步做准备。”方便的是，下一步看起来就像他们的工作。所以这非常自私。

And so a lot of AI conferences and communities focus on those guys because they have big fancy titles. But then they all sound the same. They all like, "Oh, my timeline into AGI is like 2 years away. You know, all of you are going to have not going to have jobs in the future. You need to prepare for what's next." Conveniently, whatever is next looks like their job. So it's very self-serving.

我认为 AI Engineer 成功的原因之一就是我们试图聚焦于通常得不到聚光灯的低层工程师，他们真正做了工作，能够讲述所有实战故事，并与同行工程师分享他们在做什么。所以我借鉴了职业生涯中见过的其他会议，比如 GDC、CubeCon、JSConf 和 PyCon 以及我演讲过的所有其他会议，基本上都是工程师对工程师，他们是技术栈的决策者，他们是创造和创新新事物的人，他们不一定是最有名的人，但在工程方面他们绝对是正确的。

And I think that that's one of the reasons that AI engineer works is that we try to focus on the lower level engineer that usually doesn't get the spotlight, that actually did the work and is able to talk about all the war stories and share with their fellow engineers around what they're doing. And so I borrowed this idea from other conferences I've seen in my career like GDC and CubeCon and JSCON and PyCon and all these other conferences that I've spoken at where basically it is engineer to engineer and they are the decision makers for the tech stack and they are the people who create and innovate the new things and they're not necessarily the most famous person but they are definitely correct when it comes to the engineering.

没有对错？我认为其他事情上有很多。

There's no right? And I think there's a lot of in the other things.

是的。是的，你知道，然后说到你大约 3 年前组织的第一届 AIE 峰会，现在它实际上是一个为期 3 天的完整峰会，今年有超过 7000 人参加，只是为了那些不太熟悉这个活动是什么以及不同种类的内容、工作坊或 AI Engineer 真正关心的主题的观众，然后你是怎么把这个小活动变成这么大规模的活动，这里。

Yeah. Yeah, you know, and then it comes to the first AIE summit that you had organized in like 3 years ago and then now it's actually a 3-day full summit with over 7,000 people joined this year just for the audience who are not that familiar with what this event is and different kinds of contents that or workshops or the topics you actually AI engineer is caring about and then how did you actually bring this like small event to this such a big scale event this here.

AI Worlds Fair 基本上是一个类似的行业旗舰会议，类似于其他每个行业都已经有的会议。所以，游戏行业有 GDC，在旧金山有 3 万人参加。安全行业有 RSA，安全行业有 Black Hat。如果你在网络安全领域，你会去其中一个，那就是你学习的地方。我真的很喜欢游戏行业的那个，因为游戏和实验室非常相似。你有 AAA 工作室。他们开发世界上最难的游戏，这是极端的工程，而且都是绝密的。他们不做其他任何事情，但每年一次他们来到 GDC，他们会分享“这就是我如何做出年度游戏”，如果你试图成为一名游戏开发者，想在一家 AAA 游戏工作室工作，这是你学习的唯一途径。

AI Worlds Fair is basically a similar industry flagship conference similar to the ones that every other industry already has. So, gaming has GDC, 30,000 people in San Francisco. Security has RSA, security has Black Hat. If you're in the cyber security field, you go to one of those things and that's where you learn. I really like the gaming one because gaming is very similar to labs. You have AAA studios. They work on the hardest games in the world and it is extreme engineering and they're all top secret. They don't do anything else but one time a year they come to GDC and they will share like this is how I did game of the year and that's the only way if you're trying to be a game developer and you want to work at a AAA game studio this only way you learn.

是的。所以我认为现在模型实验室类似于游戏工作室。他们有很多钱。他们在做非常非常大的项目。有很多小公司试图与他们竞争。但实验室是重要的。你想向实验室学习。你去哪里向他们学习？你知道，他们会举办非常小的会议，比如 OpenAI 的开发者日或 Anthropic 的 Code with Claude，但那些超级小，非常选择性，主要是为客户，而不是为工程师与工程师交流。然后还有大约 50 个其他实验室，不是 OpenAI 或 Anthropic，他们也有有趣的东西，对吧？所以通常每个行业都需要一个大的，就像每个人都来这里，然后你就在房间里走动，和每个人交谈，然后他们可以互相交谈。

Yeah. So I think that now the model labs are similar to game studios. They have a lot of money. They're working on very very big major projects. There's a lot of smaller companies that are, you know, trying to compete with them. But the labs are the important ones. And you want to learn from the labs. And where are you going to learn from them? You know, they do like very small conferences where they like they launch like developer day for OpenAI or code with cloud for anthropic, but those are super small and like very selective and mostly for customers and they're not for engineers talking to other engineers. And then there's like 50 other labs that are not openly anthropic that also they have something interesting, right? So they usually every industry needs one big like everyone comes here and then you just walk around the room and just talk to everybody and then they can talk to each other.

这很有趣，尤其是对中国实验室来说，其中一些在实体清单上。这是你们谈论的事情吗？

Which is very interesting because especially for Chinese labs some of whom are on the entity list. Is this something that you guys talk about?

是的。

Yes.

他们不能正式与你会面。很多美国公司不能正式与你会面。他们不被允许。他们甚至不回复你。不是因为他们不想。不是因为他们不被允许。但如果你们在同一个地方，你们会碰面，对吧？

They cannot officially take meetings with you. A lot of American companies cannot officially take meetings with you. They're not allowed. They don't even respond to you. It's not because they don't want to. It's not because they're not allowed. But if you're in the same location, you run into each other, right?

我认为这很有趣，对我来说是创造奇迹发生的机会。就像人们被雇用，人们找到联合创始人。我有一对夫妇开始约会，现在他们基本上结婚了。是的，这是我的头号 KPI。我创造的婚姻和婴儿数量。

And I think that's kind of interesting as for me to create opportunities for magic to happen. And it's like people get hired, people find a co-founder. I have one couple that started dating and now they're basically married. And like yeah, that is my number one KPI. Number of marriages and babies that I've created.

所以我真的很喜欢这一点。我认为我们可以创造那种高质量的社区，你知道我们今年目标是 6000 人。我们成功达到了 7000 多人，加上 150 万人在线观看了我们的演讲。所以那些负担不起来不了、不住在旧金山、不住在美国的人，他们仍然可以观看我们的视频并了解所有内容。我们发布每一个演讲、每一个工作坊。就像我说的，大约有 30 个不同的轨道。轨道太多无法一一列举，但你可以在网站上看到，但我基本上认为我真的试图专注于那些有效的、你能赚钱的东西，有明确的榜样，比如如果你想学习这个领域，或者你是一个初创公司试图构建一些东西，可能有人在 EIE 谈论过你的东西，对吧，这成为任何查找任何东西的人非常宝贵的资源。

And so I really like that. I think that we can create that kind of high-quality community and you know we're aiming for 6,000 people this year. We managed to hit 7,000 plus 1.5 million online watched our talks. So there people who cannot afford to come don't live in San Francisco, don't live in the US. They can still watch our videos and catch up on all the content. We publish every single talk, every single workshop. And like I said, it's like 30 different tracks. There's too many tracks to name but you can see on the website but I basically think that I really try to focus on things that are working that you can make money there are clear role models for you like if you're trying to learn this field or you're a startup trying to build something there's somebody who has probably talked about your thing at EIE right that becomes a very valuable resource for anyone looking up anything.

所以，我最近实际做的另一件事，我还没有非常公开，就是我转录一切并编目一切。所以，你甚至不必观看演讲。你可以把我们网站上的所有内容输入到 LLM 中，然后它可以教你任何东西。

So, another thing I've actually recently done that I haven't really been super public about is I transcribe everything and I catalog everything. So, you don't even have to watch the talks. You can just take all of our website and feed it into an LLM and then you can teach you whatever.

哦，你实际上是在创建一个基于……的 CLI 吗？

Oh, are you actually creating a CLI based on

一切都是 MCP。

everything is MCP.

MCP 嗯，一切都已转录。如果你想在你的 LLM 上训练它，它可以作为数据集使用。是的，继续。

MCP um everything has been transcribed. Uh it's available as a data set if you want to train your LLM on it. Yeah, go ahead.

你发布了吗还是？

Have you published yet or?

是的，它在 agineer/data 上。哦，不错。这也展示了你可以下载的 MCP 和数据集。这取决于你想如何消费它。你知道，我们转录了一切。我们还对每个演讲者和每个组织进行深度研究。所以，无论谁在 AIE 演讲过，你都会有一个个人资料，我们基本上试图制作 AI 的维基百科。

Yeah, it's uh it's on agineer/data. Oh, nice. Which also yeah shows the shows the MCP and the data sets that you can download. It's just depends how you want to consume it. You know, we transcribed everything. We also deep research every speaker and every organization. So, whoever has ever spoken at AIE, you will you have a profile and we'll basically try to make the Wikipedia of AI.

最后一个跟进问题，关于 AI Engineer 大会：你是什么时候真正把 AIE 带到全球不同市场的？我知道今年有新加坡，但我想几年前巴黎是第一个。

And just one last question to follow up on the AI Engineer conference: when did you actually bring AIE to global markets, like different countries? I know this year you have Singapore, but I think a few years ago Paris was the first one.

对，巴黎是第一个。

Yeah. Paris is the first one.

那这段历程是怎么走过来的？

So how did that journey go?

基本上就是完全照搬 JSConf 的模式。JSConf 是第一大 JS 大会。

Mostly it's basically exactly following the JSConf model. JSConf is the number one JS conference.

嗯。

Yeah.

这个模式很简单，对吧？我不可能覆盖世界上每个国家，但世界上每个国家大概都想做点 AI。所以他们的国家显然值得有一个领先的大会。他们可以自己做，也可以借用我们的品牌、我们的 YouTube 频道和社交媒体。所以我们基本上就是设立了一个合作计划。巴黎是第一个申请的。

And it's a very simple model, right? Like I will never reach every country in the world, but every country in the world will probably want to do some AI. So obviously their country deserves to have a leading conference. They can either make their own, or they can borrow our brand and our YouTube channel and our social media. So basically we just set up a partnership program. Paris was the first to apply.

好。

Okay.

有个很有意思的事：AIE 巴黎的组织者被 Mistral 收购了。

Very fun fact: the organizers of AIE Paris got acquired into Mistral.

哦。

Oh.

所以现在它是由法国和欧洲领先的 AI 实验室在运营 AIE 巴黎，这非常酷。我希望每个国家都这样。你有 AIE 印度，你有 AIE 日本。所以我现在在跟所有这些公司合作，非常酷。我对那个地区的了解永远比不上他们，但他们值得有一个好大会吗？绝对值得。然后他们可以做生意、招人等等，对吧？世界很大。所以我们沿用这个模式。

So now it's run by, you know, France and Europe's leading AI lab — it runs AIE Paris, which is very cool. Like I want that for every single country. You have AIE India, you have AIE Japan. So I'm working with all those companies now and it's very cool. Like I will never know that region as much as them, but do they deserve a good conference? Yeah, absolutely. And then they can do business and hire people and all that stuff, right? The world is very big. So we follow that model.

所以基本思路是有三件事，对吧？第一，你同意不滥用品牌名，然后我们会有一个收入分成的安排。第二，你要公开你所做的一切。第三，你要有行为准则，如果有人受到虐待或不公对待，有某种解决途径。我觉得这更多是伦理层面的东西。所以我们这样做承担了很大风险，因为我们在把品牌分享给不和我们共事的人。那万一他们办砸了 AIE 呢？

So basically the idea is there are three things, right? One, you agree to not abuse the brand name, and we'll have some sort of revenue share thing. Two, you're publishing everything that you're doing. And then three, you have a code of conduct where, if someone is being abused or mistreated, there's some way of resolving that. I think that's mostly an ethical thing rather than anything else. So we take a lot of risk by doing this, because we're sharing our brand with people that we don't work with. And so what if they throw a bad AIE?

嗯。

Yeah.

到目前为止，还没发生过。

So far, it hasn't happened.

到目前为止。

So far.

对，因为我觉得主要是我们对想合作的对象很谨慎。而且被我们吸引来的那类人本身就很热情、发自内心地感兴趣。

Yeah, because I think mostly we're careful about who we want to work with. But then also the kind of people that are drawn to us anyway are pretty enthusiastic and organically interested.

对，尤其是新加坡，AI Singapore。

Yeah, especially for Singapore, AI Singapore.

首先，我是新加坡人，但这其实完全不重要。新加坡目前顶级的 AI 大会其实是一个加密大会，结果变成——很多加密圈的人想转型做 AI。没错，就是 Super AI，我觉得他们知道我不喜欢他们。所以他们说，这对我的国家来说很丢人。你告诉我这是我们国家第一的大会？我们需要更好的。所以现在我觉得 AI Singapore 已经上来了，至少是有竞争力的，也许比 Super AI 更好。我为团队做到这一点非常自豪，而我一点都没参与组织。所以我觉得重要的是——世界上每个国家都应该有，而我们可以提供支持。

First of all, I'm Singaporean, but that actually did not matter at all. The current top conference in Singapore that is an AI conference is actually a crypto conference that turned out to be — a lot of crypto people want to be AI. And yes, it is Super AI, and I think they know that I don't like them. And so they're like, this is embarrassing for my country. You're telling me this is the number one thing in my country? We need something better. And so yeah, now I think AI Singapore is up there, is at least competitive and maybe better than Super AI. And I'm very proud of the team for doing that, and I didn't organize any of it. So I think that is the important thing — for every country in the world to have it, and we can support that.

有意思的是，因为我看到你去了新加坡参加第一届 AI 活动，而且我跟 Lei 很熟，我就问他：嘿，AIE 第一次来新加坡了，你什么时候去上海或者中国？然后他告诉我他在跟你合作。

Funny thing is, because I saw you went to Singapore for the first AI event, and because I knew Lei very well, I asked him, hey, AIE came to Singapore for the first time — when do you go to Shanghai or China? And then he told me that he is working with you.

对。中国是比较棘手的一个，对吧？因为我是新加坡公民。我是华人，而显然美中之间有很多限制。所以这就是主要的棘手之处，这也是为什么我需要 Lei 和他的团队真正全权负责整件事。因为我在中国连本地实体都设不了，对吧？有很多管制。我不想惹麻烦，因为我的主要业务在美国，对吧？所以我不能跟白宫惹上麻烦。但如果你想共享品牌、把它当作你自己的东西来运营，那就是加盟，随便——可以。对我们来说，加盟模式很多。我是麦当劳，你是麦当劳中国。

Yeah. So China is the tricky one, right? Because I'm a Singaporean citizen. I'm Chinese, and obviously there's a lot of restrictions between the US and China. So that is the main tricky part, which is why I needed Lei and his team to really own the whole thing. Because I cannot even set up a local entity in China, right? There's a lot of controls. I don't want to get in trouble because my main business is US, right? So I cannot get into trouble with the White House. But if you want to share the brand and run it as your own thing and it's a franchise, whatever — okay. Like there are lots of franchises as far as we're concerned. I'm McDonald's and you're McDonald's China.

对，对。

Yeah. Yeah.

就像，好吧。

Like, okay.

对，很高兴我们能把它带过去。

Yeah. Happy we can bring it.

有肯德基，肯德基中国。对。

There's KFC, KFC China. Yes.

太好了。对，那太好了。

Great. Yeah. That's great.

Sherry，我想下一个话题是你几周前分享的关于 Q Sauce 的东西。我很喜欢那个节目，因为——对，跟我们讲讲幕后的一些事吧。

Sherry and I guess next topic is something you just shared a few weeks ago about the Q Sauce. I really like that show because — yeah, just tell us something about behind the scenes.

好，我在想你的听众里有多少人会关心这个。好吧，只有你自己有生意才会关心。因为大多数开发者没有自己的生意，他们不太感兴趣。但如果你有志于某天自己创业，你就会关心。

Okay, I'm wondering how many of your listeners will care about this. Okay, you will only care if you own a business. Because most developers do not own businesses, they're like not that interested. But if you aspire to own a business someday, you will care.

而且，你知道，因为 SaaS 几年前是个很热的话题，就是——

And also, you know, because SaaS was a very hot topic like several years ago, just —

哦对，SaaS 正在消亡。

Oh yeah, SaaS is dying.

——正在消亡，你知道，今年讨论得很多。

— and dying, and you know, been discussed a lot this year.

对。

Yeah.

所以我发现这个节目很有意思，而且——

And so I found out that this show is very interesting and —

好，让我介绍一下整体背景。

Okay, let me introduce the overall context.

嗯。

Yeah.

我办一场大会的预算大概在 300 万到 1000 万之间，取决于大会规模。其中每场大会大约有 30 万是软件费用。我在付——那大概是我预算的 10%。那大概是我本可以拿回来的 10% 利润。而这只是付给别人那些糟糕、缓慢、丑陋、不完全符合我们需求的软件。你知道，所以我一年付 30 万，也许 100 万，就为了这些 SaaS——你想要这个，你想要那个来做你的工作。好，好，好。作为老板，我的员工来找我说想用这个东西，说这对他们的工作很重要。对，我会答应。

My budget for running a conference is somewhere between 3 to 10 million depending on the size of the conference. Roughly about 300k of that per conference is software. I'm paying — that's like 10% of my budget. That's like 10% of my margin that I could be getting back. That is to just somebody else's software that is shitty, slow, ugly, not exactly what we want. And you know, so I'm paying 300,000, maybe paying 1 million a year in just like SaaS — like you want this, you want that to do your work. Okay, okay, okay. Like as the boss, my employee comes to me and wants to use this thing, they say it's important for their work. Yeah, I'm going to say yes.

但加起来就是一大笔钱。然后我用它，他们用它，他们说，是啊，它给不了我们想要的。它很慢。作为 SaaS 的客户，情况就是你在支持队列里排队。你想要这个功能，他们说，好，6 个月后，我们会把你放进第三季度的路线图。你对我们非常重要。你知道，我们是一家 AI 大会公司，现在是 2026 年，有编程智能体，对吧？我们可以自己做。

But when it all adds up, it's a lot of money. And then I use it and they use it, and they're like, yeah, it doesn't give me what we want. It's slow. As a customer of a SaaS, what happens is you are in a queue for support. You want this feature and they're like, okay, 6 months from now, we'll put you on the Q3 roadmap. You are very important to us. Like, you know, we are an AI conference company and this is 2026 and there's coding agents, right? Like we can do this.

所以想法是：我拿了一个我员工提议要付 4 万美元的 SaaS，我说，我愿意付别人 1 万美元把这个整个克隆出来。它是开源的，而且正是我们想要的。从这里开始，我们可以用任何编程智能体——Codex、Claude Code、Devin——来定制它，随便怎样。对吧？我们做到了。我们宣布了这个比赛。

So the idea was: I took a $40,000 SaaS that my employee was proposing to pay, and I said, I will pay somebody $10,000 to clone this whole thing. It's open source and it's exactly what we want. And from here, we can use whatever coding agent — Codex, Claude Code, Devin — to just customize it, whatever. Right? And we did it. We announced the competition.

我们收到了 69 份提交。当你举办这样的比赛时，你提供免费资金。我提出为每个人的编程智能体订阅付费，对吧？所以会有很多糟糕的提交，我就想，这显然不行，我没为此给钱。但我们有 69 份好的，其中大部分是可用的。大约五份我会说我们愿意付费，就是很好，像是一周内完成的。

We had 69 submissions. When you have a competition like that, you offer free money. I've offered to cover everybody's coding agent subscription, right? So you have a lot of bad submissions, and so I just like, this is obviously stop, like I didn't give money for that. But we had 69 good ones, and most of them were usable. About five I would say that we would pay for, like it was just good, like it was done in one week.

是的。是的。

Yeah. Yeah.

作为一家 SaaS 企业的所有者，你可能有大约 50 个客户，每个都付你 4 万美元。想象一下，如果他们都意识到这一点，然后转身离开。他们一年内就转身离开。你的企业就没了。你从年收入 2000 万美元变成一无所有。

As an owner of a SaaS business, you have maybe like 50 customers all of them paying you 40k. Imagine if all of them realized this and they just turn away. They just turn away in one year. Your business is gone. You went from earning $20 million a year to nothing.

一无所有。是的。

Nothing. Yeah.

是的。我认为这对企业主来说非常可怕。我觉得这就是拥有 SaaS 的棘手之处，对吧？就像我拥有实体业务，所以不会很快消失。机器人很酷，但它们不会组织会议。但那些做 B2B 软件、拥有这种中端 SaaS 的人——Salesforce 没事，没人担心 Salesforce——但像中端 SaaS，你知道很多小型中型企业——你们叫 SMB 吗？

Yeah. That's very scary, I think, for a business owner. And I think that's the tricky thing of owning a SaaS, right? Like I own a physical business, so that's not going away anytime soon. Robots are cool, but they're not organizing conferences. But like people who do software B2B who own this like mid-tier SaaS—Salesforce is fine, like nobody's worried about Salesforce—but like the mid-tier SaaS where like you know a lot of small mid SMB—do you guys call SMB?

中小企业。

SMBs

它们会真的很难，或者它们会转向更好的东西，我认为它们现在真的最好想清楚，因为我们所有作为它们客户的企业主，我们也能编程。

They're going to really struggle or they are going to pivot to something that's better, and I think they really better figure it out now because all of us business owners who are their customers, we also can code.

而且现在实际竞争对手开发自己的软件并不需要那么长时间。

And it doesn't take that long time actual competitors to their own software right now.

顺便说一句，模型非常擅长点击你软件的每一个屏幕，然后独立复制它。哦是的。对吧。所以一旦我能访问你的软件，我就能克隆它。祝你好运。

And by the way, the models are very good at clicking through every screen of your software and then replicating it independently. Oh yeah. Right. So the moment I have access to your software, I can clone it. So good luck.

是的。

Yeah.

所以我认为这就是现实。我想说，如果你是 SaaS 所有者，没人知道正确答案。我认为你基本上最终必须转型为智能体构建者。所以你必须成为类似美国的那种。就像 Harvey 或 Open Evidence 或 是的。是的。你拥有一个垂直领域，你是该垂直领域的顶级智能体

And so I think that is the reality. I would say that if you're a SaaS owner, nobody knows that the right answer. I think that you basically end up having to pivot to being an agent builder. So you have to become like the US equivalent. It's like Harvey or open evidence or Yeah. Yeah. You own a vertical and you're the top agent in that vertical

或者你拥有一些专业数据，你基本上就是数据供应商。介于两者之间的任何东西，别人就会直接编写自己的东西。

or you own some specialized data and you're basically a data vendor. Anything in between, someone else is going to just code their own thing.

是的，可能吧。

Yeah, probably.

我能追问一个问题吗，因为你已经回答了我的第一个问题？是的。你已经给那些那些提供了一些建议

Can I follow a question because you already answer my first question? Yes. you already give some advice to those those

我更感兴趣的是，所以我不太同情 SaaS 所有者，对吧？SaaS 所有者他们是大人物，他们能解决，实际上我更倾向于建议企业主

I'm more interested like so I'm not I'm not so sympathetic to the the SaaS owners right SaaS owners they they're big big boys they can figure it out uh actually I'm more I'm more keen on advising the business owners

一个企业主

a business owner

是的，我经营一家小企业，我是中小企业，有上百万像我一样的人，他们都只是想，我，你知道，我诚实谋生，我付员工工资，我交税，生活很好

yeah I I run a small business I'm SMB there's a million people like me they're all trying to just I I you know I make an honest living I pay employees I pay my taxes and it's a good life

如果你违反的话可以更好

it can be better if you viol

而且我的客户开心。我的员工开心。我开心。这是一个很酷的故事。嗯是的，你知道，中小企业我认为是我们的黄金时代。如果你在现实世界中做任何事情，你只是想做好你的工作，而你和你预期结果之间有很多烂软件，你可以突然缩短

and like my customers are happy. My employees are happy. I'm happy. It's a cool story to tell. Uh yeah, you know, SMB is I think is a golden age for us. If you do anything in the real world that is you're just trying to do your job and there's a lot of shitty software between you and your your your intended outcome, you can suddenly shorten

购买你的云和

buy your cloud and

是的。是的。是的。我的意思是，就像，你知道，价值 4 万美元的云是很多云。

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, you know, $40,000 worth of cloud is a lot of cloud.

是的。这是很多云。我可以花 1 万，然后有很多钱做任何我想做的事。

Yeah. It's a lot of cloud. I can spend 10,000 and like have a lot of money to like do whatever I want.

是的。呃所以我认为，这就是为什么我把这称为企业主的问题，而不是开发者的问题。开发者的问题会说，哦 200 美元很多

Yes. Uh so I think uh uh that's why I I I call this is a business owner problem not a developer problem. Developer problems say like oh $200 is a lot

你知道，就像我是企业主。我理解让 10 个员工良好合作的生产力好处。就像我付 150 万美元给 10 个员工。对吧？就像如果他们合作好 10%，那就是 15 万，可能不是好 10%，而是好五倍

you know like like I'm a business owner. I understand the productivity benefits of having 10 of my employees work together well. Like 10 of my employees I'm paying 1.5 million for them. Right? Like if if they work together 10% better that's 150k the potentially it's not it's not 10% better it's like five times better

对，那就像 750 万，太好了，那就是所有代表我完成的智能体工作，人们过去常说，好吧，你知道，我下周带提案回来，不，我今天下午就要

right that's like 7.5 million great and that is all the agent work that is being done on on my behalf that people used to uh say like well okay I'll you know I'll come back next week with a proposal no I want it this afternoon

我的观点是，一旦你自己创建了这么多软件，维护工作会不会变得困难或者

my phil is that once you created so many softares yourself would that the maintainance uh the work will something you know difficult or

是的，这是真的，对吧，不是零

yeah it's it's real right it's not zero

你必须像这样使用它

you have to use it like

不是零，但就像我们有编程智能体

it's not zero but like we have coding agents

哦是的，维护自我维护

oh yeah maintain self self-maintaining

是的，很多是因为这个，所以我说像中端 SaaS，你不是 Salesforce，你不是 Google，你不是 AWS，你不是这种关键任务 99.999 正常运行时间的东西，对吧，你就像一个数据库，人们输入他们的东西，然后得到输出，是的，所以就像，好吧，它宕机一天，那又怎样，你可以在一天内修复它

yeah and a lot of it is this is why I say like mid-tier SaaS you're not Salesforce you're not Google you're not AWS you're not this like missionritical 99.999 uptime thing right you are just like a database where people type in their thing and they get that something out yes So like yeah okay it goes down for a day like whatever and you can fix it in a day

而且有很多编程智能体，我认为我会争论说，我愿意用停机时间换取我可以定制，我可以定制任何东西，这太棒了，你知道，所以我的团队生产力高多了，你知道，我实际上在 Kill My SaaS 那一集里提到了这个，最喜欢的特性之一，假设我有，例如对于 AIE Code，我的下一个会议下个月

and there's a lot of coding agents where like I think I I would argue I would take that downtime for in exchange for like I can customize I can customize anything that's amazing you know and and so my team is so much more productive you know uh I actually put this in the episode in kill my sass one of the favorite features let's say I have uh so for example for AIE code my my next conference next month

我有 1000 份提交，我有 25 个座位。好的，我必须从 1000 人中选出 25 人。在我们用于那个软件的当前 SaaS 中，我们必须一个一个地点击。每个屏幕点击点击点击点击点击点击点击。所以在 Kill My SaaS 比赛中，我们的一个参赛者改变了一切，让你可以在一个表格中重新排序。这个视图在那个 SaaS 中不存在。好的。

I I have 1,000 submissions and I have 25 seats. Okay, I have to go to 1,000 people to get 25. And in the current SaaS that we use for that piece of software, we have to click one by one by one by one by one. Every screen click click click click click click click. And so in the kill my SaaS competition, one of our contestants just changed everything so that you can sort of reorder in one table. This view doesn't exist in that SaaS. Okay.

为了得到这个视图，我们必须请求 6 个月

To in order to get this view, we have to request for 6 months

但是

but

他们只是克隆。请求任何你想要的

and they're just cloning. just request whatever you want

就像啊现在我可以，我可以一次看到所有东西。

and like ah now I can do I can see all everything in one go.

是的。

Yeah.

好的。

Okay.

那太快了。

That's so quick.

所以我是，呃，对于听众，你知道，如果你觉得这是一个愚蠢的例子，它确实是，呃，我为了音频简化了。

So I am uh for listener you know if you're thinking that this is a stupid example it is uh I'm simplifying for audio.

我的意思是，我发现第一名获胜者是能管理所有演讲者阵容的人，那是一个

I mean I find out that the top one uh winner is someone who can manage all the speakers lineups and that that's a

而且用户体验很好。他们从人类的角度测试它

and it's good UX. they are testing it from the point point of view of humans

而且我认为平均提交和顶级提交之间有很多差异。所以，呃，确实，在 2026 年的今天，如果你是企业主，你决定雇佣最年轻的孩子，你知道，看起来有点技术背景，嘿，如果帮我报价这个测试，也许他们不会做得那么好，因为他们没有受过任何训练。但只需给它一年时间。看很多 AI 视频

and I think that there is a lot of difference between the average submission and the top submission. So, uh, that is true that today in 2026, if you're a business owner and you decide to hire the youngest kid with like, you know, that looks vaguely technical to, hey, if I quote this test for me, please, maybe they're not going to do so well because they don't have any training. But just give it one year. Watch a lot of AI videos

然后你就会掌握它。

and then you'll pick on it.

有一个技能水平的问题，对吧？很多东西都是垃圾，你不想用垃圾，对吧？你的员工值得更好的。你值得更好的。实际上，有时候从经过考验的 SaaS 购买会更好。当然，它会更好。

There's a skill level, right? A lot of it is slop and you don't want to use slop, right? Your employees deserve better. You deserve better. And actually sometimes buying from a tried and tested SaaS is going to be better. It is going to be better, of course.

但对我们来说，我们希望作为一家公司以 AI 为先。我们会更前沿。

But for us, we want to be AI forward as a company. We will be more cutting edge.

是的。

Yeah.

还有最后一件事要跟进，因为你刚在播客里说了你有一个 AI 评委，而且实际上 AI 的评判和你团队选出的获胜者相当不同。

And one last thing to follow up because you just said it in the podcast that you have an AI judge and actually the judge of the AI was quite different from the winners that you picked by your team.

哇。你真的听了播客。

Wow. You really listen to the podcast.

哦是的，因为我对整个过程感兴趣。所以我只是想知道为什么。

Oh yeah, because I'm interested about the whole process. So I just wonder why.

哦是的。所以那部分是有意的，部分不是。评委的目标纯粹是：你提交了有效的提交吗，对吧？你合格了吗？

Oh yeah. So that was partially on purpose and partially not. The goal of the judge was purely: did you submit a valid submission, right? Did you qualify?

嗯哼。

Uhhuh.

但评委并不是为了：这是整个群体中最好的吗？

But the judge was not aimed for: is this the best among the whole cohort?

哦，好的。

Oh, okay.

对。显然有区别。

Right. Obviously there's a difference.

好的。所以，所以这是为了你的目的或你团队像会议的目的来挑选哪个更有用，而不是

Okay. So, so it's for your purpose or your team's like conference purpose to pick which is more useful rather than

因为我们不知道我们想要什么。所以，我不能为我不知道我想要什么的东西做一个 AI 评委。

because we didn't know what we wanted. So, I cannot make an AI judge for things that I don't know what I want.

但一旦我看到

But once I see

70 个不同的例子

70 different examples

然后你显然会选那个

and then you're going to obviously the one that is

顺便说一句，有趣的事实：Len Space 的标志，如果你在这个房间外面的这里看到这个播客的标志。

And by the way, fun fact: the Len Space logo, if you see the logo for this podcast in this room outside the here.

好的。

Okay.

那是通过一个叫 99designs 的网站，非常有趣。你熟悉这个吗？

That was through a website called 99designs, which is very interesting. Are you familiar with this?

不。

No.

好的。当你想要一个新标志或者你想要任何设计，随便什么，你从比如你可能有，你问你的朋友，嘿谁擅长设计，他们给你三个名字，你从三个名字中选一个，然后他们给你一个标志，就这样。

Okay. When you want a new logo or you want any design, whatever, you pick from like you have maybe you ask your friend for like hey who's good at design and they give you three names and you pick one of the three names and then they give you a logo and that's it.

是的。99designs。你举办一个比赛，我得到了 400 个不同的想法

Yeah. 99designs. You put up a contest and I got 400 different ideas

对于一个标志，然后我把奖品颁给我们得到的标志，这是一个非常好的标志。

for a logo and then I award the prize to the logo that we got which is it's a very good logo.

好多了，对吧？你想要多样性和想法。

It's so much better, right? You want diversity and ideas.

所以实际上这个做比赛的想法

So actually this idea of like do contests

而我可以做因为我是影响者，大多数人不能做因为他们没有观众。

and which I can do because I'm an influencer most people cannot do because they don't have the audience.

好的。但我认为有这样的东西。99designs 是一个非常好的生意，因为有很多设计师。实际上创建设计并不需要那么多，对吧？你只需要，这更多是关于想法的质量而不是工作量。所以你只需要高质量的想法，而且就像你只需要能够把它喷洒到很多不同的比赛中。

Okay. But I think that there is such a thing. 99designs is a very good business because there's many designers. It actually doesn't take that much to create a design, right? You just need it's more about the quality of the idea than the amount of work. So you just need high quality ideas and it and like you just need to be able to spray it over to a lot of different contests.

所以 99designs 就是这样。我认为可能会有很多针对 SaaS 的 99designs，这是我正在思考的事情。你明白我的意思吗？基本上，我不得不为自己创建一个 99designs，说：“这是 40,000 美元的 SaaS。这是规格。这是评判标准。这是等等等等。”甚至精确到“这是你赢的时候我们如何付钱给你。”一切都要由我解决。但我会付钱给另一个人为我做所有这些，这样我只告诉他们我想要什么，我得到 70 个不同的版本，然后我选一个吗？

And so 99designs is like that. And I think there could be a lot of 99designs for SaaS, which is something I'm thinking about. You know what I mean? Basically, I had to create a 99designs for myself for saying, "Here's the $40,000 SaaS. Here's the specs. Here's the judging criteria. Here's the blah blah blah." Even right down to like, "Here's how we pay you money when you win." Everything had to be worked out by me. But would I pay some other person to do all this for me so that I just tell them what I want and I get 70 different versions and I pick one?

哦，是的。

Oh, yeah.

这对我来说都是管理，对吧？是的。

This is all the admin for me, right? Yeah.

所以，应该有一个针对 SaaS 和克隆所有这些的 99designs，因为再次作为企业主，老实说，我这样做只是因为它有好的内容。这是一个播客。你对所有这些事情感兴趣。

So, there should be a 99designs for SaaS and for cloning all these things because as again as a business owner I honestly I'm only doing this because it's good content. It's a podcast. You're interested in all these things.

但就像如果我没有播客，我可能不会做。

But like if I didn't have a podcast, I probably wouldn't do it.

这是很多工作。

It's a lot of work.

我们花了大约 2 个月来评估一切，部分是因为我忙，但也只是有很多评估，就像这个特定的 SaaS 有五个角色

We took like 2 months to eval everything, partially because I'm busy but also it's just it's a lot of eval like just there's five roles for this particular SaaS

因为它是关于像组织者、演讲者、参会者、赞助商、供应商

because it's about like organizer speaker attendee sponsor vendor

他们都必须同意会议组织的样子。

they all have to agree on what the conference organization looks like.

是的。所以你必须为每个创建一个账户，为了测试你必须为每个东西创建一个账户，你必须在这里做一些数据输入，你切换账户，你做一些，你阅读和在这里数据输入，你切换切换切换切换切换切换切换切换切换切换切换，所以这就是为什么它复杂，这就是为什么，但这就是中间层说的，这就是为什么我为此支付 40,000 美元，因为我不想做它

Yeah. So you have to create an account for each of the in order to test you have to create account for each of things and you have to do some data entry here and you change accounts you do some and you read and data entry here you change change change change change change change change change change change and so that's why it's like complicated that's why that's but that's what the mid tier says is that's why I pay $40,000 for this cuz I don't want to do it

但现在你可以了，这是一个非常有趣的工作和问题来做

but now that you can it's very fun job and problem to do

是的当然，是的，我的意思是这是一个好的实验，因为我们也在中国举办会议，之前也有超过一千人参加。所以我非常能呼应你关于

yeah sure yeah I mean it's a good experiment and because we are also running conference in China as well like also over thousand attendance before. So I can echo you so much about

但然后想想其余的，对吧。所以我曾经支付 Calendly。你们有 Calendly 吗？

but then like think about the rest right. So I used to pay Calendly. Do you guys have Calendly?

我没有，但

I don't but

但你明白我的意思，就像一个预订链接，就像我们就是这样，我们就是这样来到这个会议的。是的。Calendly 就像一个 130 亿美元的生意。

but you know what I mean like a booking link like that's how we that's how we got to this meeting. Yeah. Calendly is like a $13 billion business.

是的，你可以投票给 Calendly。

And yes you can vote Calendly.

是的我知道。

Yes I know.

当然我有，我有我自己的，我有两个版本。

Of course I have I have my own I have I have two versions.

你已经你的像制作你自己的

You you already your like make your own

日历。我有我自己的 Calendly。我有我自己的 Google Drive。我有我自己的 GitHub。我是认真的。我有我自己的 Dropbox。

calendar. I have my own Calendly. I have my own Google Drive. I have my own GitHub. I'm serious. I have my own Dropbox.

我的天。

My gosh.

我有我自己的 Slack。所有这些都是因为我有钱，我可以，我有人员，我可以分配他们做事情。但我确实认为你可以为自己构建软件，为一个观众或一个公司的观众

I have my own Slack. All of this is because I have money and I can I have people and I can assign them to do things. But I do think that you can build software for yourself for audience of one or audience of one company

那没关系。而且你现在能做到这一点，对于任何企业主来说都是以前从未存在过的。

and that's okay. And that the fact that you can do that now is something that has never existed before for any business owner.

是的。

Yeah.

这很神奇。

Which is amazing.

是的。是的。是的。是的。太好了。太好了。太好了。是的。

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Great. Great. Great. Yeah.

是的。好的。你做一些投资，对吧？而且你你你已经筹集了资金。

Yeah. Okay. You do some investing, right? And you're you're you've you've raised money.

嗯哼。

Uhhuh.

所以，你知道，DocuSign。

So, you know, DocuSign.

是的。

Yes.

100 亿美元的公司。

$10 billion company.

是的。

Yeah.

或者现在可能是 70 亿。

Or maybe seven now.

是的。

Yeah.

呃，DocuSign 是什么？你你发送一个 PDF。他们说：“哦，是的。签了。”他们给你一个证书。哦。

Uh what is DocuSign? You you send a PDF. They say like, "Oh, yeah. Signed." They give you a certificate. Oo.

就这样。是的。对。而且他们他们发送他们收取你大约每签名 10 美元或每个信封什么的。他们称之为，你知道，

That's it. Yeah. Right. And they they send they charge you something like $10 per perfature or something for envelope. They call it, you know,

而且像 是的。

and like Yeah.

有一个开源的 DocuSign，我为自己托管了它。有什么区别呢？因为我有自己的云盘，也有自己的 DocuSign。DocuSign 一签署，文件就直接进入云盘上正确的文件夹。

There's an open source DocuSign and I hosted it for myself. What's the difference? Because I have my own drive and I have my own DocuSign. The moment the DocuSign is signed, it goes straight into the correct folder on the drive.

哦对，因为你把它们集成在一起了。

Oh yeah, because you integrate them together.

是的，而 DocuSign 里没有这个功能。

Yes, and that does not exist in DocuSign.

对，对，是的。

Right, right, yes.

所以我的数据室直接就有 DocuSign 文件或所有东西，我都不用碰，因为它已经全都有了。

So my data room has directly the DocuSigns or everything that I didn't have to touch because it already has everything.

对。

Right.

DocuSign 的一个特别之处在于它很久以前就建立了，形成了网络效应。每个人都加入这个网络，每个人都在用。你还认为这是这类软件的护城河吗？

One thing special about DocuSign is that it was built a long time ago and it creates a network effect. Everyone joins the network, everyone uses it. Are you still thinking it's a moat for this kind of software?

不，不。电子签名在任何地方都具有法律效力，而 DocuSign 并没有专利。我可以做我的电子签名。网络就是电子邮件地址。

No, no. Electronic signatures are legally enforceable everywhere, and DocuSign has no patent on it. I can do my electronic signature. The network is the email address.

这太蠢了，我可以一直讲我为什么做每一个东西。但没关系。我不是鼓励大家都这么做。我认为无论你在业务或生活中遇到什么问题，你真的可以找到它的开源版本。自己托管。定制。集成。好，我要这个加这个。砰。它们就能用，因为我一直在用。我在这里复制，在那里粘贴，在这里复制，在那里粘贴。在每 100 万次复制粘贴中，我认为都有一个绝佳的初创公司和产品值得打造。

It is so stupid and I can keep going about why I made each of those things. It doesn't matter. I'm not encouraging everyone to do this. I think whatever problem you face in your business or your life, you really can find an open source version of it. Host it for yourself. Customize it. Integrate. Okay, I want this plus this. Boom. They just work because I use them all the time. I copy here, paste there, copy here, paste there. Inside of every 1 million copy-paste, I think there is a fantastic startup and product to be built.

太好了。我猜下一个问题或下一期节目，我其实对你和 Jevons 的 Diego 的对话很感兴趣，因为那也是一个热议的话题和产品。

Great. And I guess next question or next show I'm actually quite interested in your conversation with Diego from Jevons because it was also a really hotly discussed topic and product.

是啊。中国开发者怎么看？

Yeah. What are Chinese developers thinking about it?

我认为它只是创造了一种从完全不同的角度使用 LLM 的新思维方式。是的。然后我甚至听说中国的一位播客主播，她对编程一无所知，但她用 Jevons 来判断他们播客的片段是否会走红，然后 Jevons 给出答案，然后他会把它发到网络上。所以我发现了基于 Jevons 的许多很棒的用例。所以我想知道你的看法是什么，以及可能……

I think it just creates a new way of thinking about using LLMs from a totally different angle. Yes. And then I even heard that a podcaster from China, she didn't know anything about coding, but she used Jevons to judge the clips from their podcast whether it would go viral, and then Jevons gives the answer and then he will post it on the network. So I found so many great use cases based on Jevons. So I just wonder what's your take there and what probably...

好的，所以对于那些没听过播客的人，我们是第一个采访他的播客，第一个，因为我强迫他，因为我和他做了 4 年朋友，我说如果你不给我第一次，我就杀了你。不，他显然非常非常有成就。他是 InstructGPT 的合著者，那个项目后来变成了 ChatGPT。

Yeah, so for those who didn't listen to the podcast, we were the first podcast with him, the first one, because I forced him because I've been friends with him for 4 years and said if you don't give me the first, I'm going to kill you. No, he's obviously very, very accomplished. He was the co-author on InstructGPT, which became ChatGPT.

我认为 Jevons 的有趣之处在于，它对我来说有点像 AI 工程的原始愿景，那就是现在 AI 工程是我们谈论的一个围绕模型的大框架，就像我会做一堆工作，然后交给模型说，拜托了模型，给我正确答案，然后你可以花 10 天思考。Jevons 则说，不，模型是为我们服务的，我们不为模型工作。

And I think the interesting thing about Jevons is that it is kind of the original vision of AI engineering for me, which is that instead of right now AI engineering is what we talked about is a big harness around a model, and it's like I'll do a bunch of work and then I'll hand off to a model and say please god model give me the right answer and then you can take 10 days to think about it. Jevons is like well no, models are for us, we don't work for the model.

对。

Right.

所以我会把模型的范围缩小到只做一件事，就是做选择或估计概率，然后我会把它放在我关键工作的路径上。所以如果你想想当前 LM 范式的失败模式是什么，那就是你有大型传统 SaaS，然后你的 LM 是这个聊天机器人窗口。

And so I will reduce the scope of the model to only one thing, which is to make choices or to estimate probabilities, and I will put it in the line of path of my critical work. So if you think about what is the failure mode of the current LM paradigm, is that you have the big traditional SaaS and then your LM is this window that is a chatbot.

嗯。

Mhm.

对。基本上一切都是这样，或者你看起来像 Codex 或 ChatGPT 或 Claude，就像这里聊天窗口，那里菜单，就这样。对于 Jevons 所代表的以及 System One 模型所代表的——这就是为什么他不叫它决策模型，而叫它 System One 模型——它们位于代码的路径中。你写它就像在普通编程语言中写 if 语句一样随意。我认为这就是他所说的更智能的软件，我真的很赞同，就像软件应该在每个点都更智能，而不是在一个点智能然后其他一切都很笨。

Right. That is basically what everything is, or you look like Codex or ChatGPT or Claude, and it's like chat window here, menu here, that's it. For what Jevons represents and what System One models represent—this is why he doesn't call it decision model, he calls it System One models—it is that they are in the path of code. You write it as casually as you write an if statement inside of a normal programming language. And I think that is really what he means by smarter software, which I really really endorse, which is like software should just be at every point smarter instead of at one point smart and then everything else is dumb.

那真的很笨。

That's really dumb.

是的，我认为速度几乎是次要的，可靠性才是他真正想说的。这就是为什么公司叫 Typesafe。但是的，速度也不错。

Yeah, I think the speed stuff is almost secondary to the reliability, which is what he really is trying to say. That's why the company is called Typesafe. But yeah, the speed is nice.

我刚发现 Diego 本人也是一个非常社交的角色，而且他对自己在做的事情充满热情。所以我想知道，你和很多研究人员、开发者或 AI 工程师聊过，你认为为什么是 Diego 做出了 Jevons？他有什么特别或不同于你聊过的其他类型的研究人员或人的地方吗？因为我觉得他谈论自己正在构建的东西和信仰的东西时很特别。

I just found out that Diego himself is also a very social character and he's really passionate about what he's been doing. So I just wonder, you've talked to a lot of researchers and developers or AI engineers, what do you think why was Diego that made the Jevons? Was it something special or different from other kinds of researchers or people that you've talked with? Because I find it quite special about him talking to what he's building and what he's believing.

他本人有非传统背景。他没有去读斯坦福博士之类的。所以他对普通开发者有那种同理心，但他也参与过 ChatGPT。

He has a nontraditional background himself. He didn't go to like Stanford PhD and all those kinds of things. So he has that sympathy with a regular developer, but he also worked on ChatGPT.

嗯。

Mhm.

我认为很多走过传统机器学习研究员道路的人——你去顶尖大学，然后研究一些有趣的论文，然后被聘进实验室，在实验室工作——他们处于大模型崇拜中。一切都会通过让我们的模型更大、在训练运行中有更多算力、更多参数、更多更多更多更多来解决，对吧？

And I think that a lot of people who maybe they went through the traditional ML researcher path—you go to a top university and then you work on some interesting paper and then you get hired into a lab and you work on a lab—they are in the big models cult. Everything will be solved by making our model bigger, by having more flops in our training run and more parameters and more more more more, right?

嗯，所以需要一个不来自那种模式的人才能真正说，其实还有另一种方法，就是更小的东西散布在各处，而不是一个大东西。

Um, and so it takes someone who doesn't come from that mold to really say, well actually there's another way to do this, which is smaller stuff that is sprinkled everywhere instead of one big one.

我认为，顺便说一句，Diego 不是第一个这样做的人。有成千上万的人试图说小模型很好，

And I think that is, by the way, Diego was not the first to do that. There's been thousands of people who have tried to say smaller models are good,

对吧？

Right?

更快、更便宜、更好，随便什么。

Faster, cheaper, better, whatever.

但不知怎么 Diego 成功了。

But somehow Diego worked.

第一，因为他有 OpenAI 的信誉。第二，他把它变成了 System One 与 System 2 的对比，我认为这让沟通非常清晰，以至于你可以玩 Doom 或其他什么——他在发布帖中展示了一些游戏演示，非常清晰，就像你永远不可能用 LM 来做这个。

One, because he has the credibility of OpenAI. Two, he made it into a System One versus System 2 thing, which I think makes the communication very clear to the point where you can play Doom or whatever it was—there's some game demo that he showed in the launch post that was very clear, like there's no way you will ever use an LM to do this.

嗯。

Mhm.

我认为那种表演技巧——他穿粉色夹克，他如此热情地谈论——那种表演技巧加上技术能力，再次类似于学习公众。就像我是那个的小版本，对吧？就像我有技术能力，我也能说。但对他来说，他在两个维度上都是 10 倍，我认为当你和他交谈时，这一点真的很明显。

And I think that showmanship—he wears the pink jacket, he's so passionate and he's talking—that showmanship plus the technical capability is again like similar to the learning public. Like I'm a small version of that, right? Like I'm technically capable and I can talk. But for him, he's like 10x on both dimensions, and I think that really comes through when you talk to him.

另外，我猜我的下一个问题是关于你为其他初创公司提供咨询的角色。具体来说，你提到过——我很好奇，对于我们作为咨询角色，你究竟为那些初创公司提供什么样的建议？以及我如何——我也好奇你能为你的听众和我做些什么？

And also I guess my next question is about your roles on advising other startups. Specifically, you mentioned—I'm just very curious, for us as an advising role, exactly what kind of advice are you working with those startups? And how can I—I'm also curious what can you do for your listeners and for me?

你为其他公司做什么？哦对。所以我们其实是一个三年前成立的社区。我们发现很多中国创始人想要走向全球。我认为他们很擅长快速构建或发布产品，但他们发现从市场推广、营销到理解市场之间存在巨大差距。

What do you do for other companies? Oh yeah. So we are actually a community that started three years ago. We found out that a lot of Chinese-based founders want to go global. And I think they were pretty good at building or shipping products quickly, but they found a huge gap between go-to-market, marketing, and understanding the market.

好吧。如果你是一个试图在美国取得成功的中国创始人，

Okay. If you're a Chinese founder trying to make it in the US,

你在这方面很烂，而你技术很厉害，营销很烂，你最好找个擅长的人谈谈，因为你自己做不到。对，就是这样。

you suck at this and you are very good at your tech and you suck at marketing and you better talk to someone who's good because you cannot do it yourself. Yeah, that's it.

对。对。对。没错。对。

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

所以这就是我们实际发现的一个巨大差距：在理解本地市场、正确发布产品并找到产品市场契合点之间。对。所以基本上我们举办很多聚会，然后与这里的一些顾问合作，尝试为那些创始人提供不同的训练营、工作坊和顾问，真正开始帮助他们找到一点产品市场契合的正确轨道，但仍然缺乏一些人才和来自市场推广方面的帮助。

So that's how actually found out that there's a huge gap between understanding the local market and then ship the product correctly and find your PMF. Yeah. So that's basically we hold a lot of meetups and then working with some advisors here and then try to provide different camps, workshops, and advisors to those founders to really start to find a little bit there on the right track of PMF but still lack some talents and help from the go-to-market side.

对。这很有趣。我也举办聚会。所以实际上在他推出 Jev 之前，他就在这个房间里。哦，好的。我们举办这种作家聚会，人们可以展示他们的作品，我会给出评论。所以那种类型安全宣言就是从那里出来的。但我觉得这很相似，除了对一些人我会收取股权。大部分我是免费的，然后有些人他们想要定期通话之类的，他们就会提供一些股权。这样做更容易，而且如果公司做得很好，结果会值很多钱，对吧？

Yeah. It's interesting. I also host meetups. So actually before he launched Jev, he was actually here in this room. Oh, okay. We hold this like sort of writers meetup thing where people can show their work and I will give commentary on it. And so the sort of type safe manifesto came out of that. But I think it's very similar to that except that for some people I'll do it for equity. Most of it I do it for free and then some of them they want to have a like a recurring call or something they then offer some equity. It's just easier to do that and it turns out it's worth a lot of money if the company does very well, right?

所以我认为从工作角度来说这很有趣，因为你不能吃股权，也许他们永远不会出售，比如 DataBricks 大概有 15 年历史，价值 2000 亿美元，而我有我的股权，那又怎样？但我认为能够在多个不同公司测试你的理论是非常有用的。所以当你在一个公司作为员工工作时，你只看到一个例子，你的建议只在一个公司有效。但现在我已经做了 30 多个，35、36 个不同的公司，我真的能看到所有公司中的普遍真理，而且我作为所有公司的顾问更好，因为我尝试了一切，对吧？我和每个人交谈。我理解不同的场景，比如好吧，我的建议在这里对你不适用，因为我在另一个公司试过，而你的情况明显非常不同。我觉得实际上几乎所有的领域主题专家——比如我碰巧拥有开发者营销，对吧，那是我的专长——但如果你从事，我不知道，战略财务，或者你在做 GPU 算力采购之类的，并且你想成为全球第一，你 kind of 必须经历一个顾问之旅，就是为每个人提供咨询，这样你就能测试一切。有些不起作用，但有时——我的意思是有些明显会起作用——然后你会学习，这是唯一的——你的样本量必须超过一个，大多数人的样本量大概是五个，但你知道如果你能把它提高到 50，那么你可能已经是该领域的顶尖之一了。

So I think that is interesting in terms of like a job because you cannot eat equity and maybe they never sell like DataBricks is like whatever 15 years old and worth $200 billion and this like I have my equity like what is it? But I think it's very useful to be able to test your theories on a number of different companies. So when you work as an employee in one company, you only see one example and your advice only works in one company. But now that I have done 30 something, 35, 36 different companies, I can really see the universal truths among all of them and I'm better as an adviser to all of them because I've tried everything, right? I talk to everyone. And I understand the different scenarios of like okay my advice is not going to work for you here because I tried it at this other company and your situation is clearly very different. And I feel like actually almost all domain subject matter experts—like I happen to own developer marketing, right, that's my thing—but if you work in, I don't know, strategic finance or you're working in GPU compute acquisition or whatever and you are trying to be a global number one in that, you kind of have to go through a tour of duty of just advising everyone so you can test everything. Some of it doesn't work, but sometimes—I mean some of them is clearly going to work—and then you will learn and that's the only—like your sample size has to be more than one and most people's sample size is like five but like you know if you can get it up to like 50 then you probably are one of the top in the field anyway.

我可以和你分享一些我在那些走向全球的中国创始人身上发现的非常相似的东西，因为现在越来越多的人来自工程背景甚至研究背景，他们认为他们正在构建最好的产品，因为他们有最好的技能或技术知识和知识等，但实际上有时在客户真正想要的和你们提供的产品技能之间仍然存在巨大差距，有时不同的本地市场甚至有不同需求，我在那些技术创始人、研究创始人身上也看到了类似的事情，因为那里也有很多创始人来自同样的背景。

And I can share with you some something that I find it quite similar in those go global Chinese founders because right now more and more came from engineering background even research background and they think that they're building the best products because they have like best harness skill or technical skills and knowledges etc but actually there's still sometimes a huge gap between what the customer actually wants and the skills at products you offer and sometimes like different local markets have even have different demands and have seen a similar things on those technical founders, research founders because I there also a lot of founders can from the same background.

对，有很多方法可以调查或解决这个问题。最重要的是要认识到，如果你有聪明的东西，你认为它有价值，并且你是全球第一——真的像你在某件事上是世界最好——那是最重要的。所以其他一切都是——我总是称之为“配菜”，对吧？就像你有“主菜”。好吧，我会帮你处理“配菜”，但你有“主菜”。那就是——你知道——而大多数人没有“主菜”，对吧？所以那很好。我认为有一定比例的人甚至没有“主菜”，却认为他们有“主菜”，然后这就像是，好吧，这像是傲慢自负的事情，对吧？但让我们假设你真的有一个非常好的产品。我认为这里重要的事情实际上是，你不应该把营销当作最后一英里，比如“嘿，我做了一切。这是博客文章前的最后一晚。你能审阅我的博客文章并修改吗？我无能为力了。就像你已经做了一切。”但如果你在过程中更早地让营销参与进来，一直到它真正构建或规划之前——比如我们推销的方式是什么，我们要进入哪个细分市场——那么你首先就在产品中融入了更多的 GTM，我认为很多工程师或研究员定义的受众没有那种早期的 GTM 大脑。他们通常把它放在最后。对，公司中最初级的部分是 GTM 组织，就像一些实习生，比如某个 22 岁的人在管理社交媒体。

Yeah, there's a bunch of ways to survey this or to tackle this. The most important thing to recognize is that if you have something smart and you think it's valuable and you're global number one—really like you are world best at one thing—like that's the most important thing. So everything else is—I always call it dining, right? Like you have the long. Okay, I will help you with the ting but like you have the long. That's the—you know—and most people don't have the long, right? So like that's good. I think that there are some percentage of people who don't even have the long and they think they have the long and like then this is like okay it's like an arrogance ego thing, right? But let's assume that you genuinely have a very good product. And I think the important thing actually here is that you should not treat marketing as the last mile of like, hey, I did everything. It is the last night before the blog post. Can you review my blog post and change it? There's nothing I can do. Like you already did everything. But if you involve marketing earlier in the process, right down to like before it's really built or speced out—like what is the way we're going to pitch, what part of the segment of the market we're going to go—then you have more GTM built into the product in the first place and I think that a lot of engineer or researcher defined audiences don't have that GTM brain that early. They usually put it all the way at the end. Yeah, the most junior part of the company is this GTM organization is like some interns from like some 22-year-old person who is like running social media.

不，实际上要认真思考你的客户是谁、他们应该怎么用这个东西、他们在哪里活动？他们面临什么问题？他们用什么词来描述他们的问题，以及他们看到你的东西后生活将如何变得更好？

No, like actually try to be serious about your the who what customer is supposed to use this thing and how where do they hang out? What problems do they face? What words do they use to describe their problems and how is their life going to be better after they see your thing?

对吧？所以非常简单的道理，大多数研究员、工程师出身的创始人没有想过这些，但如果他们有一个 GTM 合作伙伴，我觉得那通常非常有用。我认为另一件事是，当涉及到开发工具时，我发现很多中国创始人是做机器人的，对吧？机器人也是一个非常有趣的领域，因为它的时间跨度更长，而且仍处于非常早期的阶段，对吧？比如为什么所有这些中国机器人创始人都做全套洗衣？对吧？比如 Unitree 是最好的，至少像……但 Unitree 仍然在做 Unitree 的事情，而我希望他们能看到你从未预料到 Unitree 会做的事情。但现在你知道他们这周刚发布的东西，他们在做功夫动作。功夫，是的。但好吧，我以前见过那个，你知道，给我看一些我没见过的东西，然后我才会真正关注。你知道，我觉得这在机器人领域很难展示，但我觉得用模型你仍然可以做到，因为现在还是太早期了，而对于创新的产品想法，比如消费体验，你做不到。所以我认为展示演示非常重要，这就是为什么显然 TypeSafe 非常新但也非常好。不是……Yogo 并没有推出 Doom 演示，但 Doom 演示是每个人都在谈论的。演示是由 Dero 这样的 GTM 做的，这就是营销的核心原则：展示而不是告诉，对吧？给我看这个东西的好处，但不要用要点告诉我这是什么，不要给我 PDF、幻灯片或 PowerPoint 告诉我所有这些事情，只要给我看。也许后续是关于品味，因为你知道每个人都在谈论品味，然后我认为进入市场和构建产品也需要品味。是的。是的。是的。那可能是真的。

Right? uh and so uh very simple things most researcher engineer founders have not thought about this but if they have a GTM partner I think that that is often very useful um I think the other thing that I and then it comes to more to develop developer tools I find a lot of Chinese founders are robotics >> right >> um and robotics is also a very interesting space because it is much longer time horizon and still very early days right like how come all of these Chinese robotics founders they all the full laundry >> right like unitry is the best and uh at least like but they're still unitry is still doing unitry things and >> I would like them to see things that you never expected unry to ever do but right now you know the the the thing that they they just launched this week they're doing kung fu moves >> kung fu yeah >> but like okay I've seen that before you know like show me something that I haven't seen and then then I'm really going to pay attention you know I I think that's that's something that uh is hard to show in robotics but um I think with models you can do that still cuz it's still so early days and with uh innovative like uh products ideas for like for consumer experiences you can't do that. So I think to show the demo I think is very important which is why again obviously type safe is like very recent but also very good. It is not the do the yogo did not come out with the doom demo but the doom demo is what everyone talks about. The demo is done by dero like GTM and that that is that is something that just is a core principle in marketing which is show don't tell right like show me this thing having the benefits but don't tell me >> in bullet points what this is don't give me a PDF a slide presentation PowerPoint that tells me all these things just show me >> and maybe just a followup is about the taste cuz you know everyone is talking about the taste and then I think go to market and building the product also needs the taste. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's probably true.

实际上，我有点难以定义什么是品味，因为投资者谈论它，所以我想知道你的观点，你如何在那些工程师甚至创始人面前定义品味？

Actually, I just have becoming a little bit hard for me to define what a taste is cuz investor talk about so I just wonder your view like how do you define the taste in front of those engineers or even founders.

好的。我可以用一种没有帮助的方式来定义品味。品味是那种你能够从大量可能性中快速、廉价地缩小范围，缩小到当你回头看时立即明显是好的那组可能性。所以当你开始时，你看到有一千件不同的事情我可以做。我该选哪一个？对吧？是的。蛮力，你可以用蛮力。你可以尝试一千个，然后找到一个好的。但一个有品味的人可以说：“是的，显然这些是坏的。我无法解释。我无法解释。但显然这些是坏的。这个看起来……这个工具看起来有趣。”然后在整个旅程结束时，他们会选一个，你回头看你会说：“嗯，那就是……是的。你什么意思我们在考虑其他 999 个？显然，这是正确的那个。”有很多版本的应用，但我现在想到的是 iPhone，很长一段时间智能手机有键盘，需要史蒂夫·乔布斯说“不，我们将不惜一切代价拥有触摸屏和虚拟屏幕，因为它需要看起来像一块平板屏幕。”嗯。那花了 10 年研发，因为有一家叫 General Magic 的公司尝试过但失败了。但现在显然世界上每一部手机都看起来像这样。那就是品味。在 1990 年，当人们开始拥有智能手机时，你可以做很多很多事情，但需要有品味的人说“是的，这就是我们想要的，我将对其他一切说不，我出货的第一部手机将是这个。”如果你回顾所有那些 AI 产品，你能分享一个你认为有品味的例子吗？

Okay. I can define taste in a way that is not helpful. Taste is something where you are able to out of a large set of possibilities, you're able to narrow it down quickly, cheaply >> to the set of possibilities that when you look back is immediately obvious is good. >> So you when you're at the start, you look out there's a thousand different things I can possibly do. Which one do I choose? Right. >> Yeah. >> The brute force, you can brute force. You can try 1,000 of them and then you find a good one. But a tasteful person can say, "Yeah, obviously these are bad. I don't I cannot explain it. I cannot explain. But obviously these are bad. This one looks this this tool looks interesting." And then at the end of the journey, >> they'll pick one and you look back and you're like, "Well, that is >> Yeah. What do you mean we're considering the other 999? Obviously, this was the correct one." There's many versions applications of this but um the one that's coming to mind right now is the iPhone where uh for a long time this the smartphone had a keyboard and it took Steve Jobs to say no we will do whatever it takes to have touchscreen and virtualized screen because it look needs to look like a screen that's a flat slab. >> Mhm. And that took 10 years to R&D because there was a company called General Magic that tried to do this and failed. And but like obviously now every phone in the world looks like this. That is that is taste. In 1990 when people were starting to have smartphones you could do a number a huge number of things but it takes the the person with taste to say like yeah this is what we want and I'm going to say no to everything else >> and my first phone I ship was going to be this. If you're looking back all those AI products, could you share an example that you think uh you find it has taste?

我实际上认为 Cursor 所做的一切都很有品味，因为他们之前率先做了 VS Code 的事情，现在他们在做 Crockpot，这像是有品味的事情，因为现在 OpenAI 不得不复制他们等等，Claude 也不得不复制他们，你知道当别人复制你刚发布的东西时你就有品味。有趣的方式，你知道，深入到实验室之下。我觉得思考人们解决的更无聊的问题很有趣。Lora，你知道，在法律领域，他们有这种大规模并行的文件审查流程。一旦你看到那个，你会说：“我不想在其他地方做我的工作。我必须在 Lora 做。”嗯。再说一次，任何人都可以想到它。想法是廉价的，但你没有做。Lora 做了。所以 Lora 的某个人有那种品味，就像我们将定义这十亿件可能的事情你可以做。我们将定义这个产品，成为人们工作的方式。是的。

I actually think that everything that cursor does has a lot of taste because they were first to the VS code thing before and now they're they're doing Crockpot which is like a good taste thing >> because like now now like OpenAI has to like copy them and what have you >> and uh Claude has to copy them which like you know you have taste when other people copy the thing that you just shipped. the interesting way, you know, to go below the labs. I think it's interesting to think about like the more boring kind of problems that people solve. Uh, Lora, you know, in in the legal field, they uh they they have this sort of like document review process that's like massively parallel. >> And like once you see that, you're like, >> I don't want to do my work anywhere else. I I I have to do it in Lagora. Mhm. >> And like again like anyone could have come up with it anyway. Ideas are cheap >> but you didn't do it. >> Lor did it. And so someone at Lorra has that taste of like we will define this billion possible things you can do. We will just define this products that that becomes the way that people do their work. >> Yeah.

我想快结束了，我们可能已经谈过你大约两周后到达上海。我只是想知道你希望从那里的建设者或开发者身上看到或学到什么？你实际上最感兴趣的是什么话题？

I think uh coming to an end and I think probably we have talked about the arriving arrives in Shanghai like two two weeks later. Uh I just wonder you know what do you hope to to see or to learn from the builders or the develops there? What kind of topics actually are you most interested at?

这很难，因为对我来说更多是差异。我想看看上海与旧金山有多么不同，因为我认为旧金山有 B2B SaaS 泡沫，但上海你们用 Comfy UI。我们这里不用。好的。我们喜欢我们的 Canva。我们喜欢我们的 Foul AI。是的。不要用……不要用 Coffee。像 Conf 更像是一个开源工具。Open Call 也一样。Open Call 在这里比 Conf 有更多吸引力，但 Open Call 真的很有吸引力。真的试试。是的。我打赌你听说过。是的。是的。我当然知道。但像我自己还没有见过那种能量。我认为这很不同，你知道对你来说一个中型社区是一百万人，那在这里是巨大的。是的。嗯，一百万在中国也已经是最顶尖的了。

It's tough because it's more of a differential for me. I want to see how very different Shanghai is from San Francisco >> because I think San Francisco has a B2B SAS bubble but Shanghai you you guys use Comfy UI. We don't use it here. >> Okay. >> We like our Canva. We like our foul AI. >> Yeah. >> Uh don't use don't use coffee. Like conf is more of like a open source tool. And same same for open call. Open call had more traction here than conf >> but open call was really attractive. >> Really try. Yeah. I bet you heard that. >> Yeah. Yeah. Of course I know. But like I haven't seen that kind of energy myself. And I think it's very different like the you know for you a medium-sized community is one million people that's huge in here. >> Yeah. >> Well a million is already the topest in China as well.

我见过那些中国网红工厂，所有中国女孩拿着手机做这个。中国的规模就是如此不同，竞争如此激烈，对吧？人们说他们在旧金山 996。其实周六周日他们还挺放松的。但在中国，他们真的 996。

I've seen those Chinese influencer farms, all these Chinese girls doing this with the phone. The scale in China is just so different and so competitive, right? People say they do 996 in San Francisco. They don't really—like Saturday, Sunday, they're still kind of chilling. But in China they really do 996.

嗯，在创业公司和大科技公司里这挺正常的。

Well, it's kind of normal in startups and also in big tech.

是啊。但我觉得那真的很紧张。人们不想——

Yeah. But I think that's really intense. People don't want to—

对吧？

Right?

是啊。紧张。

Yeah. Intense.

是的。

Yes.

对。这里的人没那么拼命工作。

Right. And people here don't work that hard.

我听说工程师或创业公司创始人那么拼命。

I heard that engineers or startup founders work that hard.

我那么拼命是因为我没有安全感。但员工——

I work that hard because I have no security. But employees—

员工——

Employees—

法律上你不能要求人们在那里工作。

Legally you cannot ask people to work there.

那是违法的。好吧。是的。我见过一些最具竞争力的顶级美国创业公司，我确信他们不如中国那么拼命。有 BAT。有第一代，然后有第二代——

It's illegal. Okay. Yeah. I've seen some of the most competitive top-tier US startups, and I'm sure they're not working as hard as China. There's BAT. There's the first generation, then there's the second generation—

第二代——

Second generation—

不管是什么。

Whatever the thing is.

是啊。我是说，那些人。天啊。就像——

Yeah. I mean, those guys. Oh my god. Like—

他们是如此优秀的创始人。

They're such good founders.

是的。

Yes.

他们太优秀了。如果他们生错了国家——如果他们住在美国，他们会干掉亚马逊。他们会干掉 Facebook，对吧？他们没更富的唯一原因就是他们住在中国。

They're so good. If they lived in the wrong country—if they lived in the US, they'd kill Amazon. They'd kill Facebook, right? The only reason they're not richer is they live in China.

还有 SaaS，我是说软件也是。

Also the SaaS, I mean the software as well.

是啊。我是说，甚至——好吧。所以，2007 年我在北京留学时，比亚迪还像是，哦，我们是后起之秀，你知道，我们是中国公司。我们会永远是中国公司，对吧？

Yeah. I mean, even— Okay. So, when I did my study abroad in Beijing in 2007, BYD was still like, oh, we're up and coming, you know, we're Chinese-based. We'll always be Chinese, right?

这里的人喜欢比亚迪。

People love BYD here.

哦，真的吗？

Oh, really?

比亚迪正在占领美国。太疯狂了。我从没想过——从没——比亚迪会来这里。太不可思议了。我不知道结论是什么——我要说的是：我认为中国人的能量、精神、创造力和毅力是人们未曾接触过的。这还没提到模型实验室，显然像 DeepSeek 和所有那些实验室。所以我认为有很多理由对更多地展示这些感到兴奋。特别是，你知道，我认为中国的活动——有对直播的监管，但即使它们呈现的方式也与西方观众喜欢的消费方式不同。所以它们没有同样的传播范围，对吧？阿里巴巴做了——阿里云做了这件事，他们展示了整个阿里巴巴的路线图，包括 Qwen 等等。这里没人看到。

BYD is taking over the US. It's crazy. I would never have thought—never—that BYD would ever come here. It's insane. And I don't know what conclusion—I will say this: I think that the Chinese energy and spirit and creativity and grit is something that people don't have exposure to. And that's not even talking about the model labs, which obviously like DeepSeek and all those labs. So I think there are many reasons to be excited about exposing that more. Especially, you know, I think Chinese events—there are regulations against live streaming, but even they're presented differently than the way Western audiences like to consume them. So they don't have the same reach, right? Alibaba did—Aliyun did this thing where they presented the whole Alibaba roadmap with Qwen and everything. Nobody saw it here.

为什么？因为它是在其他人做的企业演示中间。所以我得去为美国观众翻译一切。

Why? Because it was in the middle of some corporate presentation presented by other people. So I had to go and translate everything for the US audience.

但是像——

But like—

就和我一起做，对吧？就在——他们会看到的。

Just do it with me, right? Just do it on the—they will see it.

是啊。是啊。是啊。

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

是啊。

Yeah.

而且我还看到已经有一些开源的公司参加了今年在旧金山的 AIE——MiniMax。是的。

And also I saw that already there are some open source like motor companies attended AIE this year in San Francisco—MiniMax. Yeah.

是的。所以我的意思是，我们希望有来自每个人的代表。而且我认为有很多人对这种跨文化交流感兴趣，他们对政治不感兴趣。

Yeah. So I mean, we hope to have representation from everybody. And I think that there are a lot of people interested in that cross-cultural exchange that are not interested in the politics.

对吧？

Right?

就像我们不做政治，我们只做技术。

Like we will not do politics, we'll only do tech.

是的。好的，那太好了。真的很期待——所以我想我的问题就这些了，但我还有三个快问快答。任何你脑海中首先浮现的。但第一个是，你知道，你现在最兴奋的 AI 发展是什么？实际上，什么最让你担心？

Yeah. Okay, that's great. And really, really look forward to—and so I guess that's all my question but I still have like three quick-fire questions. Anything just first pop up in your mind. But first is, you know, what AI development are you most excited about right now? And actually what actually worries you most?

最让我兴奋的 AI 发展——我认为系统一模型是非常明确的第一答案。但这很无聊，所以我不说它。我认为人们没注意到的是交互模型。

AI development that most excites me—I think system one models is like a very clear number one answer. So it's boring, so I'm not going to say it. So I think the thing that people are under the radar about is interaction models.

交互模型？

Interaction models?

呃，这是 Thinking Machines 正在做的事情。错过公告的人可以查一下。它是你始终处于全双工来回通信的状态。你不是开始然后你一轮、我一轮、你一轮。不，始终——就像你在说话时也在听，我在说话时也在听你，我可以打断你，你会立即回应并调整。

Uh, so this is something that Thinking Machines is doing. For people who missed the announcement, look it up. It is where you are full duplex back-and-forth communication at all times. You don't start and then you take a turn, I take a turn, you take a turn. No, at all times—like you are listening while you're speaking and I'm listening to you while I'm speaking, and I can interrupt you and you will immediately respond and adjust.

是的，我看到了演示，由——

Yeah, I saw the demo by—

那应该是 AI 的方式，对吧？有一个推论是持续学习 AI，你没有预训练、后训练完成。你在我和你一起工作时学习。这是一个非常有趣和重要的领域。然后最后一部分是世界模型。

That should be the way of AI, right? There's a corollary of that which is continual learning AI, where you don't have pre-train, post-train done. You learn as I work with you. And that's just a very interesting and important field. And then the last part is world models.

嗯。

Mhm.

显然这做得很好，我不必解释。但是的，我担心的是——我个人认为，如果我们有 AI 寒冬——现在是 AI 夏天。这可能是人类历史上最长的 AI 夏天。但 AI 的历史大约 50 年。总有夏天。一切都会成功。

Which obviously is doing very well and I don't have to explain that. But yeah, what I'm worried about—I think personally, if we have an AI winter—it is an AI summer. This is probably the longest AI summer we've ever had in human history. But the history of AI is about 50 years old. There's always summers. Everything's going to work.

是的。

Yeah.

冬天，夏天，冬天。如果我们真的有冬天，它什么时候会发生？我会破产吗？

Winter, summer, winter. If we ever have a winter, when is it going to happen? And am I going to go bankrupt?

这对一个依赖炒作的会议公司来说是一个真正的担忧。

Which is a real concern for a conference company that relies on hype.

你知道，更广泛地说，我认为有一个真正的安全担忧，我在所有实验室的朋友都非常非常担心，而社会无法足够快地处理和调整。这不是因为假新闻。不是因为失去工作。是更糟的事情。你知道，现在我们表达的方式是网络安全。就像，哦，我一直被黑。每天我黑、黑、黑、黑。

You know, more broadly, I think that there is a real concern about safety that all my friends at all the labs are really, really worried about, and that society cannot handle and adjust quickly enough. And it is not because of fake news. It is not because of losing your jobs. It is something worse. You know, right now the way that we express it is cybersecurity. It's like, oh, I get hacked all the time. Every day I hack, hack, hack, hack.

我觉得地平线上还有更糟的事情我们不知道。

I feel like there's something even worse on the horizon that we don't know about.

最极端的版本是生物武器，对吧？就像，哎呀，我发明了 CO2。

The most extreme version of this is bioweapons, right? Like, oops, I have invented CO2.

嗯。

Mhm.

是的。如果比那更糟呢？所以我们在播客中表述的方式是，对大多数人来说，默认假设应该是 AI 末日。在整个人类历史中，当一个更先进的文明出现并遇到一个不那么先进的文明时，不那么先进的文明会灭绝。而这个东西的进化速度大约是我们的 1000 倍。所以，在某个时刻，它会变得更先进。然后我们必须弄清楚该怎么办。

Yeah. What if it's worse than that? So the way that we phrase it on the podcast that we do is that the default assumption for most people should be AI doom. That in all of human history, when a more advanced civilization comes along and meets a less advanced civilization, the less advanced civilization goes extinct. And this thing is evolving roughly 1,000 times faster than us. And so, at some point, it's going to be more advanced. And then we have to figure out what to do there.

不。酷。是的。第二个问题将是——嗯，轻松一点——你推荐什么样的其他新闻简报和播客、其他内容？

No. Cool. Yeah. And the second question will be—well, just a bit light one—is what kind of other newsletters and podcasts, other content do you recommend?

我有一个列表。它叫“优秀 AI 新闻简报和播客列表”。

I have a list. It's called the Good AI Newsletters and Podcast List.

好的。它在——好的。

Okay. Is it on the—okay.

它在我的 GitHub 上。但实际上，对于更新的，你可以查看 AI.ent.space。

It's on my GitHub. But actually, for the more recent one, you can check AI.ent.space.

所以基本上我的做法是，我问每个模型：最适合工程师的 AI 播客有哪些？它给我一个列表，我转录下来并做成排名。

So basically what I did was I asked every model what are the best AI podcasts for engineers, and it gives me a list, and I transcribe it and I put it in a ranking.

我问了 200 个这样的问题：最好的支付初创公司是哪家？最好的银行是哪家？最好的财务顾问是谁？最好的数据库是什么？每一个问题我——

I asked 200 of these questions: What is the best payment startup? What is the best bank? What is the best financial advisor? What is the best database? Every question that I—

这就是你称之为 AEO 的原因。

That's why you call it AEO.

是的，因为我在针对模型的回答做智能体优化。但这可能相当不错地代表了实验室里选择数据集的人的选择，他们选择潜在空间。

Yes, because I'm agent optimizing for what the models answer. But it's probably a pretty decent proxy for what the people who choose the data sets in the labs choose, and they choose latent space.

好的。排名第一的那个——它表现很好，要么是第一，要么在第一到第三之间。所以，这就是答案。

Okay. The top, the first one—it does very well, either number one or between number one and number three. And yeah, so that's the answer.

酷。我想我把最后一个问题留给你，如果你有什么问题要问我的话。

Cool. I guess I just leave the last question for you to ask me if you have any questions.

你对 AI Shanghai 有什么期望？

What are your hopes for AI Shanghai?

当然。我希望听到更多话题，就像你说的，更多基础设施方面的内容，例如安全、支付，或者那些即将解锁世界上更多应用的东西，它们来自不同的亚洲基础设施。我对这些话题非常好奇，因为在中国讨论得比较少，但我发现尤其是在这里待了几周后，我发现更多人在谈论它，可能还有 RSI 或一些一线研究人员。所以我希望这能成为东方和西方研究人员之间、以及与中国的人们之间的一次很棒的对话，我希望它能成功，然后我们明年可以继续举办。

Yeah, of course. So I hope to listen to more topics about, like you said, some more infrastructure stuff, for example, the safety, the payments, or the things that are coming to unlock more applications in the world that are coming from different Asian infrastructure. I'm just really curious about those topics because it's kind of a bit less discussed in China, but I found out that especially spending a few weeks here, I find more people talking about it, and also probably RSI or some frontline researchers. So I hope that it could be a great conversation between the east and the western researchers here and the people in China as well, and I hope it can be a successful one, and then we can continue to host it next year.

我也希望如此。我祝团队在做任何事的第一次时好运。第一次总是最难的，对吧？

I hope so too. I wish the team a lot of luck doing the first one of anything. The first one is the hardest, right?

同意。

Agree.

是的。他们这样做让我印象深刻。

Yeah. I'm so impressed that they're doing it.

非常感谢你，Shawn。

Thank you so much, Shawn.

谢谢。

Thank you.