Chinese AI Researchers Are Finding Their Voice on X
Chinese AI Researchers Are Finding Their Voice on X
中国 AI 研究人员正在 X 上发出自己的声音
The prevailing narrative in Silicon Valley is that Chinese AI models like Kimi K3 and DeepSeek R1 came out of nowhere. But the truth is that even if you never travel to China, there’s an easy way to get a sense of what Chinese AI researchers are up to: log on to X.
硅谷的主流观点认为，像 Kimi K3 和 DeepSeek R1 这样的中国 AI 模型是“凭空出现”的。但事实是，即使你从未去过中国，也有一个简单的方法来了解中国 AI 研究人员的动态：登录 X（原 Twitter）。
In the past year, I’ve seen a steady increase of Chinese artificial intelligence researchers joining X and participating in the wider discourse about AI development and commercialization. Take Moonshot AI, the company behind Kimi K3, as an example. On Thursday, I was able to quickly find around 30 accounts on X run by people who claim to be currently affiliated with Moonshot, including two of the startup’s cofounders, as well as half a dozen former employees and collaborators. And these are not dormant accounts: They talk about Moonshot’s big releases and incremental research papers, make friends with Western researchers, and share details about their personal life and hobbies.
在过去的一年里，我观察到越来越多的中国人工智能研究人员加入 X，并参与到关于 AI 开发和商业化的广泛讨论中。以 Kimi K3 背后的公司月之暗面（Moonshot AI）为例。周四，我很快在 X 上找到了约 30 个声称目前隶属于月之暗面的账号，其中包括该初创公司的两位联合创始人，以及六名前员工和合作者。这些账号并非“僵尸号”：他们讨论月之暗面的重大发布和渐进式研究论文，与西方研究人员结交朋友，并分享个人生活和爱好细节。
Moonshot is arguably the Chinese AI lab that’s most active on X, but you will easily find executives and technical staff from other leading Chinese startups, like Minimax and Z.ai. Even several employees at DeepSeek, who reportedly are unable to leave China because the government confiscated their passports, regularly post on X about the latest AI news and share job listings to recruit new talent.
月之暗面可以说是 X 上最活跃的中国 AI 实验室，但你也能轻松找到其他领先中国初创公司（如 Minimax 和 Z.ai）的高管和技术人员。甚至连 DeepSeek 的几名员工——据报道他们因护照被政府收缴而无法离开中国——也经常在 X 上发布最新的 AI 新闻，并分享招聘信息以招揽人才。
“X is the best community” for AI discussions right now, says Meng Fanqing, cofounder of the startup Evolvent AI and a former intern at Moonshot, where he worked on the Kimi K2.5 model. “There are both Chinese and overseas audiences, and the recommendation algorithm works pretty well for showing you content in the same circle that you are in,” he says. Compared with Chinese platforms, where it’s often hard to have serious technical discussions, Chinese researchers like Meng say they would rather spend their time on X.
“X 是目前 AI 讨论的最佳社区，”初创公司 Evolvent AI 的联合创始人、曾在月之暗面实习并参与 Kimi K2.5 模型开发的孟凡清（音译）表示。“这里既有中国观众也有海外观众，而且推荐算法在展示你所在圈子的内容方面表现得相当不错，”他说。与中国平台上往往难以进行严肃技术讨论的情况相比，像孟凡清这样的中国研究人员表示，他们更愿意把时间花在 X 上。
Meng says he started actively posting on X in mid-2025. At the start of the year, DeepSeek’s R1 model went viral around the world, shining a bright spotlight on China’s AI industry. Many Chinese researchers seized the moment and joined X to start sharing their perspective. “Around that time, all the Chinese researchers are starting to think about branding on an international level,” Meng says.
孟凡清说，他是在 2025 年年中开始在 X 上积极发帖的。今年年初，DeepSeek 的 R1 模型在全球走红，让中国 AI 行业备受瞩目。许多中国研究人员抓住了这个时机，加入 X 开始分享他们的观点。“在那段时间，所有的中国研究人员都开始考虑在国际层面上进行品牌塑造，”孟凡清说。
Chinese AI researchers may also be helping fill a growing gap left by researchers at OpenAI and Anthropic, who have become more reluctant to share their thinking online as their employers have grown into behemoth companies, says Tiezhen Wang, an independent AI analyst and former researcher at Hugging Face. “I guess they feel that their model architecture and how they train the model is kind of a secret, so they’re posting less,” Wang explains. As a result, Chinese researchers are getting more attention from audiences on X who are hungry to make sense of what’s happening in the fast-moving world of AI.
独立 AI 分析师、Hugging Face 前研究员王铁真（音译）表示，中国 AI 研究人员可能正在填补 OpenAI 和 Anthropic 研究人员留下的日益扩大的空白，后者随着雇主成长为巨头公司，已变得越来越不愿意在网上分享他们的想法。“我猜他们觉得自己的模型架构和训练方式属于某种机密，所以发帖变少了，”王解释道。因此，中国研究人员正受到 X 上观众的更多关注，这些观众渴望了解快速发展的 AI 世界中正在发生什么。
Why Choose X?
为什么选择 X？
One reason X may have become popular among Chinese AI researchers is that there’s not really a comparable social platform in China for high-quality technical discussions about AI and other emerging technologies.
X 在中国 AI 研究人员中变得流行的一个原因，是中国国内确实没有一个可与之媲美的社交平台，能够进行关于 AI 和其他新兴技术的高质量技术讨论。
Some people say they used to post on Zhihu, a Quora-like platform that once branded itself as the premier destination for educated professionals to show and tell. But since 2020, Zhihu has increasingly pivoted to hosting fiction content, and expert contributors have gradually fallen off. For example, Deng Yu, a Chinese mathematician who was awarded a Fields Medal this year, publicly wrote on Zhihu in 2018 that he decided to stop posting on the site due to the rise of low-quality content.
有些人说他们过去常在知乎上发帖，这个类似 Quora 的平台曾将自己定位为受过教育的专业人士展示和交流的首选之地。但自 2020 年以来，知乎日益转向小说内容，专家贡献者也逐渐流失。例如，今年获得菲尔兹奖的中国数学家邓宇（音译）曾在 2018 年公开写道，由于低质量内容的增加，他决定停止在该网站发帖。
Xiaohongshu, or RedNote, is another social platform that has become increasingly popular among the young, urban, and educated classes in China. Some junior AI researchers have opened accounts on Xiaohongshu recently and use them to share details about their work, but the audience is less technical than what they might find on X.
小红书是另一个在中国年轻、城市化和受过教育的群体中日益流行的社交平台。一些初级 AI 研究人员最近在小红书上开设了账号，并利用它们分享工作细节，但其受众的技术水平不如他们在 X 上所能接触到的群体。
When Moonshot published a new research paper in March, it caused quite a stir on both Chinese and Western social media, even attracting praise from Elon Musk. But “almost everyone on Zhihu and Xiaohongshu were talking about the background and age of the authors—one of them is only 17—and who their parents are, things that I find very superficial and gossipy,” says a current researcher at Moonshot who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media. “It was the foreign readers who actually discussed technical details and praised its breakthroughs.” He says readers on Zhihu also tend to be more mean-spirited, and the platform is plagued by higher amounts of AI slop than X.
当月之暗面在 3 月份发表一篇新研究论文时，它在中西方社交媒体上都引起了轰动，甚至吸引了埃隆·马斯克的称赞。但“知乎和小红书上几乎每个人都在讨论作者的背景和年龄——其中一人年仅 17 岁——以及他们的父母是谁，这些我觉得非常肤浅且八卦，”一位因未获授权接受媒体采访而要求匿名的月之暗面现任研究员说。“反而是外国读者真正讨论了技术细节并称赞了其突破。”他说，知乎上的读者往往更刻薄，而且该平台充斥着比 X 更多的 AI 垃圾内容。
Moonshot did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
月之暗面未立即回应置评请求。
The Chinese newcomers have generally received a warm welcome from academics and researchers at Western AI companies who were already on X, many of whom have been eager for direct information about Chinese AI labs. “Before they all came to X, we already saw a lot of influential researchers translating Chinese [AI] blogs into English,” says Wang. He points to Su Jianlin, a well-respected AI researcher who keeps an active blog in Chinese documenting his thoughts, as an example of the kind of voices that Western AI communities crave. Now, Su is working for Moonshot and has a public X account, too.
这些中国“新来者”普遍受到了已经在 X 上的西方 AI 公司学者和研究人员的热烈欢迎，他们中的许多人一直渴望获得关于中国 AI 实验室的第一手信息。“在他们都来到 X 之前，我们就已经看到许多有影响力的研究人员将中文 [AI] 博客翻译成英文，”王说。他以苏剑林为例，这位备受尊敬的 AI 研究人员一直通过中文博客记录自己的想法，他是西方 AI 社区所渴望的那种声音的代表。现在，苏剑林正在为月之暗面工作，也拥有一个公开的 X 账号。
Other Incentives
其他激励因素
Beyond the desire to participate in open discussions, Chinese AI companies are also finding that X is an effective place to market themselves and their products. “X is the platform with the highest traffic and exposure. To some extent, the AI industry works just like the finance industry now; each individual and company needs their own branding,” says Meng.
除了参与公开讨论的愿望外，中国 AI 公司也发现 X 是营销自身及其产品的有效场所。“X 是流量和曝光度最高的平台。在某种程度上，AI 行业现在的运作方式就像金融行业一样；每个个人和公司都需要自己的品牌塑造，”孟凡清说。
When AI researchers become minor social media celebrities, that helps boost the profile of their employers too. Wang says he personally advised Moonshot during a one-off consultation session for the company in 2025 to push more of its researchers to the front on social media. When a startup releases a new model…
当 AI 研究人员成为社交媒体上的小有名气的“网红”时，这也有助于提升他们雇主的知名度。王铁真表示，他在 2025 年为月之暗面提供的一次性咨询会议中，曾亲自建议该公司推动更多研究人员在社交媒体上走到台前。当一家初创公司发布新模型时……