By Xinhua author Zhang Yunlong
Beijing, June 20 (Xinhua) – At the 2025 Beijing International Book Fair, the forum examines the perceptions of artificial intelligence (AI) writers, saw Chinese writer Maisia take the stage in a light beige jacket.
Sitting alongside three other panelists, the famous novelist – best known for his spy fiction and the honorable Mao Zedong Literary Award winner – provided unusually personal and philosophical ideas about how AI is invading the realm of human creativity.
His reflection touches on deeper uneases shared by writers and artists around the world. A way to position human creativity in an age where we are imitating human creativity and even learning to surpass human imagination.
“I've never actually used AI,” the novelist said. “But I played with it. And I played with it with the intention of proving it wasn't worth playing.”
His comments made him laugh, but it was clear that he was serious about the way he thoughts behind his experiments. “I approached it with disbelief. I wanted to make it ocky. And to some extent I managed to do it, so I never really used it.”
The reports that AI was used to produce fiction in his style, and that Maizia himself contributed to its development in some way was, in his words, “pure rumors.” “I did not demonstrate anything. I've never helped build something like that,” he said explicitly.
For novelists, the rise of AI is not just about the future. It takes into account the past. “When I talk about AI, I think we're talking about the future, but that's not wise,” he said. “AI has a surge in and there is a violent vitality. It's coming to us like monsters. Like a giant we can't stop, we don't know where it's heading or what it will be.”
Rather than speculating about the future of AI, he suggested that people should look at its roots and view it as the culmination of a long “digital revolution.”
In his view, this revolution began when numbers first entered the human language. About five thousand years ago, “When the early writing systems emerged, numbers were part of them. But numbers were not satisfied with continuing to be part of writing. They always wanted to rebel.”
The writer traced the first major turning point in 1837, and he said that the invention of Morse Code – “the great technology created by a great man.” This marked the first true success of the digital revolution for Maisia.
But it was expensive. “Digital encoding has brought us enormous convenience. Messages could travel from China to Europe or the US in the morning. “It brought encryption. It melted the language. It turned the language into a puzzle, an obstacle.”
Later the second wave – computers developed in the mid-20th century came into being through basic works of figures like John von Neumann and Alan Turing. “Instead of converting writes to 10 digits, they reduced it to zero and only one,” he said. He argued that this is more fully digital than Morse Code has achieved. The advantages were enormous – “The whole library now fits on a screen, a single phone” – but so were the drawbacks.
“When that screen is in your hands, yes, it holds endless text. But it drains your time, digs your greed and pulls you down,” he said. “It disrupts your attention. It exaggerates your desire to sink.”
The third wave that novelists believe in is AI. And it's the most transformative of all time.
“For the first time, we're talking about not only reading and attention, but writing itself. Previously, we never imagined that technology could replace the human mind in creation.” He said that today's AI revolution has created creative anxiety disorders, or new things.
“I don't know how this revolution will evolve. But here's what I know. Even if AI defeats me, even if every word it writes is better than mine, I will still write,” he said. “It's not because I want to compete with it, but because writing is a way of survival. If I'm not reading, if I'm not writing, I don't know how to live.”
He ended with a quiet but firm belief: “If AI writes better than me, I will write. ■
