A survey of the AI section in a Chinese bookstore
jasminexli.substack.com · 1,748 words · saved by 1 readers
field notes on 70 popular chinese AI books
Location: A large, well-regarded bookstore in Xi’an, China, part of the Xinhua chain. The store has five floors full of books; there is one bookshelf, with 4 shelves, dedicated to books about AI. Xinhua is the distribution channel for centrally distributed mass media, so this can serve as a reasonable snapshot of current popular AI books in China. I spent ~30 minutes perusing the books on-site, then took a bunch of pictures to translate and research later. Key question: Can this collection provide signal into mainstream Chinese AI discourse, and how it might differ from the US? There were…
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