'AI bros' backlash: name-dropping AI as a social flex draws scorn
A New Weekly commentary republished by Huxiu AI popularized the Chinese slang term 'AI deng' — people who pepper conversations with Prompt, Agent and multimodal-model jargon and treat 'using AI' as a high-end social persona. The author argues this showing-off actually exposes anxiety about being left behind by new technology rather than real capability, citing examples such as Cheetah Mobile chairman Fu Sheng using AI to write Mid-Autumn greetings for 50 staff and to reply to 70-plus messages (which drew online criticism), and a Golden Eagle Awards short film criticized for inserting AI-generated avatars 'AI for AI's sake'. The piece also cites a widely shared but contested chart claiming about 6.8 billion people have never used AI, 1.3 billion have used free conversational AI, and only 0.04% have used coding-style agent tools, while noting the figures and methodology were disputed.
It captures workplace fatigue with 'AI-enabled' rhetoric versus real results, a useful signal of how AI adoption is being received beyond the technical community.
“AI登”张口闭口Prompt、Agent、多模态模型，把玩转AI当成高端社交人设。他们的虚张声势所暴露出的恰恰是焦虑——害怕被新技术抛下，又无力真正理解它，于是只能通过谈论和推崇AI这个动作本身来消解焦虑。长假期间，不少人回老家后感受到一种没有被AI“污染”过的美——没人会聊GPT、Claude、布局Age......
本文来自微信公众号： 新周刊 ，编辑：|贾小凡，作者：嗡嗡
“AI登”张口闭口Prompt、Agent、多模态模型，把玩转AI当成高端社交人设。他们的虚张声势所暴露出的恰恰是焦虑——害怕被新技术抛下，又无力真正理解它，于是只能通过谈论和推崇AI这个动作本身来消解焦虑。