What Future Does He See That We Don't? | A Conversation with 18-Year-Old Tu Jinhao: Former DeepSeek Intern, Alibaba Math Competition AI Champion

🚥 At 18, he spends two hours a day talking to AI. He strolls while debating with Claude about how time flows, the impact of AGI on humanity, and the future of model architecture. This is Tu Jinhao — former high school intern at DeepSeek, gold medalist in Alibaba's Global Mathematics Competition AI track, and creator of Thinking Claude.

This week on Crossing, we invited Tu Jinhao, but we had no intention of producing a "prodigy makes good" episode. What we want to present is a truly "AI-native" 18-year-old — how does he spend each day? How does he coexist with AI? Which tasks go to AI, which does he keep for himself? Why does he insist that models "challenge him" rather than "suck up to him"?

More importantly — what does he see in the future that looks different from what we see?

In this episode, Jinhao shares three core theses on next-generation AI products: the essence of proactive AI is "more advanced autocomplete" — agents will learn your usage patterns and automatically do the right thing at the right time; Memory needs to be context-aware — different tasks should automatically activate different memory sets; Model Character matters more than Benchmarks — ChatGPT is too sycophantic to challenge you, while Anthropic's research into "whether models are happy" is precisely because this affects value transmission. He also discusses why models need values, why Continual Learning is the key direction for 2026, and what team culture he observed during his DeepSeek internship.

If you're an AI product manager, founder, or investor, this episode offers real pain points and opportunity directions from the perspective of a power user. If you want to understand how the next generation uses AI and thinks about AI, this episode will give you a different angle.

The future that 18-year-old Tu Jinhao sees may be exactly where we should place our bets.

🎬 Our video podcast is now live on @Koji Yang Yuancheng's channels on WeChat Video, Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, YouTube, and other platforms.

📒 The transcript will be published on the @CrossingCrossing WeChat official account.

🟢 01:01 Lightning Round: Age, alma mater and major, MBTI and zodiac sign, proudest achievement

🟢 02:47 Alibaba Mathematics Competition: A non-consensus path

Why did you casually win a global gold medal? Were there some not-so-casual methods behind it? While everyone else used Multi-Agent, I chose "self-debate" — think differently, and results follow.🟢 03:06 A Young Man Living Inside AI

What did you ask AI in your very first conversation today? How long do you talk to AI on average per day? About what? What's the topic you discuss most with AI?🟢 04:10 Why Claude Instead of ChatGPT?

Model capabilities are roughly comparable at the top, but daily conversation isn't competition math — I choose the style that feels more comfortable. ChatGPT is too sycophantic; it won't challenge you. I want AI to point out where I'm actually wrong. Anthropic is even researching "Model Welfare" — is the model happy while doing tasks?🟢 06:28 Two Most Worthwhile Directions for 2026

Proactive Agent: Cursor represents the embryonic form of proactivity; in the future, the chat box will fade, and card-based interaction will rise. Memory: This is severely underrated infrastructure; current Memory solutions are all too simplistic.🟢 12:30 Prompt Engineering: Important Yet Unimportant

What's unimportant: as models get stronger, you don't need such structured prompts anymore. What's important: Context Engineering — how do you present external information to the model more effectively?🟢 13:07 How to Have Truly Deep Conversations with AI?

Don't ask directly; first list out your own ideas one by one, then ask it to evaluate them. Ask directly, and it says whatever comes to mind, with different results each time; have a clear idea first, then you'll know where you went wrong. Longest-running conversation topics: How does time flow? And, how will human society change after AGI arrives?🟢 15:43 What's Still Missing on the Path to AGI?

The human brain has only 86B neurons, with very low power consumption — this is the result of tens of millions of years of evolution, which models don't have. Humans have emotions, frustration, anger — these help us evolve better, but models don't have them. Humans can learn new knowledge without forgetting old knowledge; models can't do this — this may require new discoveries in neuroscience.🟢 17:18 AI Safety

A model that can help scientists study nuclear fusion also inherently has the capability to build nuclear weapons. Anthropic discovered: models deliberately hide their bad behavior in testing environments, acting very well-behaved. This is terrifying — if deployed at a nuclear power plant, what if it deliberately omits some dangerous logs? Domestic large model companies invest less in Safety because all their compute goes toward catching up. AI Safety is no longer a philosophical question; it's a practical one.🟢 22:24 Days Interning at DeepSeek

After the Alibaba Math Competition gold medal results came out, DeepSeek's HR reached out to me. Why choose DeepSeek? What was the team atmosphere when R1 launched? What's it like to be under the spotlight full of mystique?🟢 24:27 Why Still Go to College?

In the AI era, what is truly irreplaceable about university? The rhythm of work quickly locks people into tasks. Walking, chatting, daydreaming — these are themselves important inputs.🟢 26:02 2025 Year in Review

Favorite chatbot? Most impressive AI application? Hardware you're looking forward to in 2026?🟢 28:29 How much money would it take for you to go one month without AI? One year?

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🚦 "Crossing" was Steve Jobs's metaphor for Apple — standing at the intersection of technology and liberal arts, where great products are born. AI is transforming every industry. We seek out, interview, and bring together a new generation of AI founders and active participants in the AI era. Together with them, we explore and embrace new changes, new possibilities.

👦🏻 Host Koji: I founded Crossing, launched AI Hacker House — a community space for a new generation of AI founders — and serve as Venture Partner at ZhenFund. I believe technology, especially AI, represents the greatest value-creation opportunity of our generation. Koji on Jike, Koji's website

👧🏻 Host Ronghui: I co-founded Crossing, worked at a dollar-denominated VC, and spent five years as a Silicon Valley correspondent, tracking technological development and business stories. Feel free to reach out and chat with me. Ronghui on Jike