This Is Definitely Not the 2024 AI Top 10 List You'd Expect | A Conversation with CyberZen Founder Dacong Ming
November 10, 2024
A while back, we came across a line: "Lovely people don't get defeated by life." Both of us immediately thought of the same person.
He's known in the industry as Big Brain (大聪明), the founder of the newsletter CyberZen, our good friend, and the guest on this episode. Every time we see him, or scroll through his Jike feed and Moments, we come away with joy and energy—so we invited him at year's end to chat with us about the AI industry moments, people, or products that stuck with him in 2024. We asked him for ten.
Completely unexpected, yet utterly fitting: not a single item on Big Brain's 2024 AI Top 10 was what we'd predicted.
From the moment we hit record with him, we were laughing.
For the full episode, we're deeply grateful for his singular perspective. He spoke about people who've inspired him (and us), products that made us do a double take, and a few things he learned as one of the few industry insiders invited to an OpenAI launch—developments that haven't quite registered in China yet.
Join us in feeling some year-end energy and courage through Big Brain's 2024 AI Top 10.
🆕 New on Crossroads: "Crossroads Bulletin Board" — In this segment, we'll invite friends to share updates on their latest products, events, hiring, and more.
📚 This episode's bulletin board features two new books from friends:
- The Altman Biography by Zhou Hengxing, about the OpenAI CEO
- The LLM Revelation by four authors including Zhou Mo
🎁 The authors have each sent us five copies, and we'll be running a giveaway in this episode. Drop an emoji in the comments that captures how you felt after listening, and we'll have ChatGPT randomly select 10 winners.
04:29 Why invite Big Brain to curate the annual AI Top 10?
🏆 Big Brain's "2024 AI Top 10" 🏆
05:27 Content: Worship the AI Buddha, cultivate a CyberZen mind
17:14 Person: A highly executional P-type who built the largest AI knowledge base on Lark
25:28 People: Their AI creations have real soul—so much so they could guide where AI tools evolve next
33:00 Product: Its arrival may mean unicorns are done for
42:08 Product: Not commercially viable in the near term, but represents a kind of exploration
48:28 Quote: What Chuan Wang said at a Founder Park event
52:55 Theory: If AGI happens, what do humans do?
56:37 Person + Product: "It started with a prompt he wrote"
01:00:57 Creation: Building a new era's Dragon Gate Inn
01:08:48 Finale: Everyone knows OpenAI's developer forum, but there's something else
01:14:13 Why doesn't a single industry hot topic appear on Big Brain's "2024 AI Top 10"?
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