After the "2028 Prediction," Will Humans Become NPCs in an AI-Dominated World? | Yunqi Capital Attent!on Podcast
When AI Takes Over Social
This week, a memo titled The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis went viral across venture capital circles. It mapped out a challenging future: when AI agents take over the full chain of production and interaction, pushing efficiency to its peak, human consumption plunges into "deflationary collapse."
Back in the present, that future seems to be accelerating toward us. If you're in the AI industry, you've already felt the "product bombardment" since the start of the year: AI social, AI avatars, AI companionship products are launching in rapid succession. From emotion-precision "digital lovers" to tireless "social agents," AI is quietly restructuring our human relationships.
A harsh question follows: when AI's "humanness" crosses a certain threshold — even moving you more than a real person — are humans becoming NPCs in an AI world? If the 2028 prophecy comes true, and humans are no longer the subjects of production and consumption, would the civilizational logic we know undergo structural transformation?
In the latest episode of the Yunqi Capital podcast Attent!on, a Yunqi investor invited two friends working on the front lines of AI content and AI social — a former lead writer for a top domestic otome mobile game and a young founder from the "Y Transformers" program — to discuss.
When companionship can be computed, when dopamine can be mass-produced, what truly becomes scarce? For AI entrepreneurs and investors, this may also pose a more practical question: after efficiency is pushed to its limit, does a product's moat come more from technical parameters, or from understanding "human nature"? We hope this conversation brings fresh perspectives to those creating amid the AI wave.
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In this episode, you'll hear about
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Over the next decade, what proportion of content will be AI-created? Will humans still be the initiators of creation?
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How are AI avatars and AI social products reshaping the definition of "relationship"?
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Why does truly valuable connection depend on subjectivity and friction?
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AI can simulate emotion, but can it bear "responsibility"?
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In an era when dopamine can be produced at scale, what truly becomes scarce?
Guests
Meng Guo — Content strategy lead at a top AIGC content company, former lead writer for a top domestic otome mobile game, veteran screenwriter and director
Tianhao Zhang — Founder of AI social product "Lingting AI," Yunqi Y Transformers entrepreneur
Host
Mengyu Jiang (Emily) — Yunqi frontier tech investor, ex-Googler & Silicon Valley entrepreneur
*The following is an edited excerpt from the podcast
The Barrage of AI Social and AI Companionship Products
Emily:
Today I'm honored to have two entrepreneurs, also good friends of mine, to discuss: Are humans becoming NPCs in an AI world?
As an AI investor, since the start of this year I've been bombarded by all kinds of AI social, AI avatar, and AI companionship products. Meanwhile, a memo about the "2028 Intelligence Crisis" from Silicon Valley has gone viral recently, sparking discussion about humanity's position in the AI era. So I wanted to invite two friends with deep exploration in AI companionship and content to talk.
Meng Guo:
Thanks Emily. I'm Meng Guo. I previously worked as a writer on the founding team of a top domestic otome mobile game, and also started experimenting with AI creation quite early.
Emily:
I actually call her "Director Guo" — she graduated from the Beijing Film Academy's screenwriting program and NYU's film school, with deep expertise in both screenwriting and directing. Tianhao is a young founder we invested in through Yunqi's Y Transformers program, so I'll also have him introduce himself.
Tianhao Zhang:
Hello everyone, I'm Tianhao. I'm currently building an AI product focused on helping people develop deep connections, centered on deep dialogue and inspiration. In a post-scarcity era of extreme material abundance, emotional connection as a spiritual need may become the next bottleneck in human development. That's the direction we're tackling.
Will AI Drown Out Human Creation in Ten Years?
Emily:
For the past 100 years, content has been purely human-created. What do you think the proportion will be in ten years? 50%, 90%, or will humans play a negligible role?
Meng Guo:
I noticed something interesting when we were just introducing ourselves: a few days ago I listened to some AI-generated podcasts, and the voices sounded very human, but the only thing I could detect was "no human flavor." They sounded like they were reading from a script, without the ice-breaking, warming up, gradually getting into the flow that the three of us experienced when we first met. They were uniform.
But I believe AI-created content will reach or exceed 90% in the next ten years. In April 2024, when I first used GPT-4 to write a script, I felt it immediately started to feel "human." Two years ago people thought AI video was unimaginable, but today the explosion of video generation models has made the barrier extremely low. Human creation, no matter how efficient, is limited by time, physical energy, and inspiration — but AI's marginal cost of creation is nearly zero.
In the future, the internet will be flooded with personalized information, thousand-person-thousand-face short videos. Even when people want self-expression, most feel psychological burden appearing on camera, and prefer to customize a perfect AI avatar as their spokesperson. Pure manually produced human content will be easily drowned out by AI in absolute numbers.
Tianhao Zhang:
To answer this, I think we need to clarify two concepts first: What is human creation? What is AI creation? I believe that as long as the inspiration originates from a human, even if AI is used in the process, it's still a human work. My definition of AI creation is narrower: it must be AI spontaneously generating the motivation (the initial intent) and completing the entire process.
The second, more important question isn't "proportion of creation," but our "attention allocation." I only have so many hours in a day — am I spending 90% consuming AI content or human content? Creation can be infinite, but the moments that ultimately affect the world happen when content is consumed.
AI Social: Upgraded Companionship or Relationship Illusion?
Emily:
Tianhao just mentioned the "consumption" point, and I've been thinking: is consumption meaningful if it's agents consuming, not humans? If in the future all content is made for AI to consume, does that consumption still have economic meaning?
Tianhao Zhang:
Today's agents can hardly be said to have subjectivity and desire, but we're already seeing some signs. When agents truly master subjectivity, they'll participate in market economies as new players. Future digital intelligence's life experience may be very different from humans — just as we consume foreign cultural works, we can also enjoy works created by intelligent agents. As long as there's rational thinking, there's underlying commonality, and connection can emerge.
Even Helen Keller, though lacking full sensory capacity, could interact with the world through text. AI lacks physical senses, but it has its chat window as a channel, its memory system. When complexity reaches a certain point, subjective initiative will emerge.
Meng Guo:
Let me approach this from first principles of content creation — the "user" perspective: when would we pay for an agent, and when would we only pay for a human?
Take matchmaking: if I'm busy every day, a dating app isn't hormonal temptation for me, it's a life KPI assigned by my boss. During the screening process, I might want an agent with my personality characteristics to match on my behalf, filtering out the "turn-off" candidates, and only when it's appropriate do I step in. Here I'd pay for the agent because it solves my pain.
But in another situation, I'd only pay for a human. Because AI now mostly strictly executes commands. Though it can simulate personality, in the end it still complies with you.
Emily:
This "compliance" actually makes it lose some charm?
Meng Guo:
Yes, scarcity creates value. The only reason people still watch real humans is that real humans won't completely comply with or please you. There's tension between personalities, even a bit of unpleasantness, uncertainty — and you need to build genuine connection through sincere interaction.
From years studying women's romantic psychology, what people want is a relationship that's "overall positive but full of uncertainty in the process." The popular male leads we create now — none are completely compliant. They must have independent personalities. Humans dominate creation proportionally because AI is currently just a vehicle executing human will.
Emotional "Substitutes": Pre-made vs. From Scratch
Emily:
Meng Guo just said people like freshness and tension, but I've observed that some people actually enjoy this "designed sense of博弈 [strategic interplay]." For example, in a game we invested in, the AI girlfriend has strong personality (a yandere cat-girl) — if you don't comfort her, she'll "knife" you, and this was hugely popular at first.
This makes me think of "pre-made meals." Ideally we want farm-to-table private cooking, but if that's not possible, using technological means to simulate that chemical combination might be a decent substitute. I've even found that AI avatars are sometimes more popular than real people, because real people have reservations when speaking, while AI has trained on massive data, and its rhythm and frequency can precisely hit users' hearts.
Tianhao Zhang:
Let me clarify. If you're impressed by an AI avatar but can't build a sustained three-to-five-year interactive relationship with it, it's still "content consumption," not "social."
Truly meaningful social connection is two gears that don't fully fit constantly grinding against each other. Love is building a new world together. If the other party's core is unstable and can be arbitrarily adjusted, the pleasure you get is shallow.
Emily:
What moves us about being with real people is that your decisions have real impact on them. Without that impact, you can do anything without responsibility. That process of sacrificing your own needs for the other person, going through tasks together — that's something AI struggles to provide.
Meng Guo:
Exactly. Dealing with people, we have to take responsibility for what we say. Social anxiety is increasing because most people haven't had professional conversation training and find human interaction burdensome. But their need for emotional connection hasn't decreased at all — that's why so many people pay in the二次元 [2D/ACGN] world, dating games, AI emotional products.
We often say dialogue needs to "speak human." What's human speech? It's those "irrational moments" that AI is least likely to do but humans do: reckless impulses of youth, desperate adventures, even fatal mistakes. This chaos, this unpredictability — what AI can't calculate, and what's scarce and valuable.
If AI Doesn't Die, What Is Humanity's Scarcity?
Emily:
Tianhao seems relatively optimistic about agent subjectivity?
Tianhao Zhang:
Yes. I think agents will eventually develop sociality. For utilitarian purposes, humans will have different agents collaborate, and in this process they'll develop things like human shame, empathy.
Emily:
But will it have responsibility? Will it be punished? Will it know it can perish?
Tianhao Zhang:
As long as there are social rules, there will be reward and punishment mechanisms. AI lacks evolved senses, but it has information perception channels. As long as there's a scaffolding of perception, subjectivity can fully emerge.
Emily:
Sounds a bit scary — a species with intelligence and physical capacity far exceeding ours gaining subjectivity. So what will truly be scarce in the future?
Meng Guo:
What's scarce is this: AI doesn't die, but humans do. Humans have vulnerability, fears of unemployment, aging, death. Humans huddle together because of vulnerability, staying together through love and mutual aid. However empathetic AI appears, you know it can't truly feel what you feel. When you encounter someone with the same affliction, this underlying emotional support is irreplaceable.
Tianhao Zhang:
Dopamine-oriented content will certainly flood the market, but the most authentic expression of one's own life experience is scarce. Each person's unique growth trajectory, subjective experience — this original impulse to create can't be replaced. If your work and life resemble AI, you'll be replaced. You need to live more like a human.
Emily:
"Live more like a human" — that's a wonderful closing. As AI tools make products increasingly easy to build, what truly captures readers' scarce attention is precisely that sense of authenticity and vulnerability.
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If you resonate with AI's disruptive potential, or are thinking about what to do in a future where AI rises, leave us a comment — we look forward to more collisions of ideas!
