Kai-Fu Lee joins me to discuss AI in 2025. Kai-Fu is a storied AI researcher, investor, inventor and entrepreneur based in Taiwan. As one of the leading AI experts based in Asia, I wanted to get his take on this particular market.Key insights:Kai-Fu noted that unlike the singular “ChatGPT moment” that stunned Western audiences, the Chinese market encountered generative AI in a more “incremental and distributed” fashion.A particularly fascinating shift is how Chinese enterprises are adopting generative AI. Without the entrenched SaaS layers common in the US, Chinese companies are “rolling their own” solutions. This deep integration might be tougher and messier, but it encourages thorough, domain-specific implementations.We reflected on a structural shift in how we think about productivity software. With AI “conceptualizing” the document and the user providing strategic nudges, it’s akin to reversing the traditional creative process.We’re moving from a training-centric world to an inference-centric one. Models need to be cheaper, faster and less resource-intensive to run, not just to train. For instance, his team at ZeroOne.ai managed to train a top-tier model on “just” 2,000 H100 GPUs and bring inference costs down to 10 cents per million tokens—a fraction of GPT-4’s early costs.In 2025, Kai-Fu predicts, we’ll see fewer “demos” and more “AI-first” applications deploying text, image and video generation tools into real-world workflows.Connect with us:Exponential View Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
No persons identified in this episode.
This episode hasn't been transcribed yet
Help us prioritize this episode for transcription by upvoting it.
Popular episodes get transcribed faster
Other episodes from Azeem Azhar's Exponential View
Transcribed and ready to explore now
The method of invention, AI's new clock speed and why capital markets are confused
05 Dec 2025
Azeem Azhar's Exponential View
Why the AI productivity gains haven’t arrived - yet
21 Nov 2025
Azeem Azhar's Exponential View
Where did all the entry-level jobs go? (With Revelio CEO Ben Zweig)
14 Nov 2025
Azeem Azhar's Exponential View
The demand for infinite compute
07 Nov 2025
Azeem Azhar's Exponential View
Inside the US–China decoupling: What’s really at stake (AI, rare earths, Taiwan, trade)
23 Oct 2025
Azeem Azhar's Exponential View
Inside the collapse of the internet economy (and what comes next)
08 Oct 2025
Azeem Azhar's Exponential View