Published on April 30, 2025 11:06 AM GMT
In this blog post, we analyse how the recent AI 2027 forecast by Daniel Kokotajlo, Scott Alexander, Thomas Larsen, Eli Lifland, and Romeo Dean has been discussed across Chinese language platforms. We present:
- Our research methodology and synthesis of key findings across media artefactsA proposal for how censorship patterns may provide signal for the Chinese government's thinking about AGI and the race to superintelligenceA more detailed analysis of each of the nine artefacts, organised by type: Mainstream Media, Forum Discussion, Bilibili (Chinese Youtube) Videos, Personal Blogs.
Methodology
We conducted a comprehensive search across major Chinese-language platforms–including news outlets, video platforms, forums, microblogging sites, and personal blogs–to collect the media featured in this report. We supplemented this with Deep Research to identify additional sites mentioning AI 2027. Our analysis focuses primarily on content published in the first few days (4-7 April) following the report’s release. More media has been generated since our research was completed, and we may cover these in a follow-up if there's interest.
Summary
Below are some patterns that emerged across the content we analysed:
- Many reports omit references to China, DeepCent, and the US–China race dynamic and instead focus on technical aspects of human-level or superhuman AI development. Mentions of DeepCent, Chinese espionage, or AI betrayal are often softened or scrubbed. Less regulated platforms like personal blogs or niche video channels include more engagement with these themes.The report provoked mixed responses. Some authors treated it as a serious forecast, engaging with its concerns about alignment and US-China dynamics, while others dismissed it as alarmist or framed it as a kind of science fiction thought experiment rather than a serious forecast.Audience engagement remains low across the board. Many posts received minimal views, likes, or comments.Several artefacts make the same error of describing the report as a ‘76-page document’ despite it being 71 pages. They often reference the same milestones, too. Such details being repeated suggest that sources are copying from one another.
Censorship as Signal
The AI 2027 website remains accessible in China without a VPN—a curious fact given its content about democratic revolution, CCP coup scenarios, and claims of Chinese AI systems betraying party interests. While the site itself evades censorship, Chinese-language reporting has surgically excised these sensitive elements.
Multiple Chinese posts appeared within a day of the report’s release, indicating grassroots interests, yet view counts and engagement remain low. This may explain the lack of official censorship—the state censorship apparatus prioritises content with mass mobilisation potential rather than simply blocking all politically sensitive material. The sanitised posts likely result from self-censorship, where authors pre-emptively avoid content that might trigger account deletion or worse consequences.
The majority of our sources come from individual technology bloggers, video creators, and forum discussions. However, the article ‘The Doomsday Timeline is Here! OpenAI Researcher’s 76-page Hardcore Simulation: ASI Takes Over the World in 2027, Humans Become NPCs’ deserves closer scrutiny as it appeared on two mainstream platforms: Sina Finance and The Paper (澎湃新闻). Sina Finance is a prominent financial information platform operated by Sina Corporation, while The Paper positions itself as a more dynamic, progressive alternative to traditional state media, though still operating within China’s regulatory framework. Both platforms reach wide audiences, though exact readership numbers remain unknown. Notably, this article presented a doctored timeline completely excluding all China-related elements from the AI 2027 report.
It is interesting to consider the origin of this selective reporting in mainstream outlets. Was this self-censorship by a cautious author? Editorial guidance to remove sensitive content? Publisher-level guidelines? Or direct instructions from higher authorities? Given all mainstream media outlets operate within state parameters, the complete omission of superintelligence race dynamics between China and the United States is worth noting and monitoring, though we should be careful not to overinterpret this single case.
Monitoring censorship patterns across media and public discussions—and determining at what level this censorship occurs—could provide insights into how seriously the Chinese government views AGI development and the competition for superintelligence. The AI 2027 report predicts China awakening to AGI by mid-2026, but current evidence remains ambiguous. We lack clear signals about whether Beijing has ‘woken up’ to the AGI race—crucial information for Western strategic planning. Garrison Lovely’s November analysis ‘China Hawks are Manufacturing an AI Arms Race’ found no substantive proof of China racing toward AGI. ChinaTalk’s debate from earlier this month favoured the sceptic’s view: while DeepSeek has generated excitement, China lacks the coordinated focus of an AGI Manhattan Project, with development primarily driven by private companies while government officials concentrate on practical applications of AI. ChinaTalk warns, however, that this assessment represents only a snapshot from early 2025 and is subject to change.
Given these uncertainties, tracking censorship patterns of reports like AI 2027 and AGI topics offers a novel signal. If Chinese authorities were to prioritise AGI development as a critical national security concern, we might expect specific changes: (1) more consistent blocking of foreign AGI forecasts, particularly those depicting China in geopolitical competition; (2) tighter control over domestic AI discussions, with greater uniformity in acceptable narratives; and (3) emergence of officially sanctioned messaging about China's AI capabilities and ambitions. The absence of censorship may be equally meaningful—if content like AI 2027 continues to circulate relatively freely despite its politically sensitive elements, this could suggest AGI competition has not yet become a national security priority for Chinese leadership.
The level at which censorship occurs—self-imposed by writers, editorial guidelines, or state directives—remains frustratingly murky to outside observers, yet changes in these patterns could potentially reveal whether Zhongnanhai has begun to grasp the stakes of the superintelligence competition. While imperfect, this indicator should be monitored alongside other signals of Chinese strategic thinking on AGI.
Analysis
Please note that all of the sources below appear to engage directly with the original forecast in English–sources frequently link back to the original AI 2027 website or PDF report. We found only one full Chinese translation, attributed to Gemini 2.5, which had minimal reach (105 views at the time of writing).
Mainstream Media
English Title: Doomsday Timeline is Here! Former OpenAI Researcher’s 76-page Hardcore Simulation: ASI Takes Over the World in 2027, Humans Become NPCs
Original Title: 末日时间表来了！前OpenAI研究员76页硬核推演：2027年ASI接管世界，人类成NPC
Platforms: Sina Finance, The Paper
Author: 新智元 (literally ‘New Intelligence Era’)
Editor: 编辑部 HNZ (Editorial Department HNZ)
Published: 4 April 2025
Links: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/59ZX0Afp3kLbdj1to7HXsw, https://finance.sina.com.cn/roll/2025-04-04/doc-ineryqsr1721551.shtml, https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_30574084#
This article was published less than a day after AI 2027's launch, appearing first on the WeChat Official Accounts Platform, then on Sina Finance, and finally on The Paper. It features graphs from the report and photos of Daniel Kokotajlo and Eli Lifland.
The author begins with an edited summary of the timeline, omitting all China-related elements. Below is a word-by-word translation of this modified timeline:
‘According to the report, the timeline for AGI and ASI is roughly as follows:
● Late 2025: World’s most expensive AI is born, computing power reaches 10^27 FLOP
● Early 2026: Programming becomes automated
● Late 2026: AI replaces some jobs
● March 2027: Algorithmic breakthrough, Agent-2 is born
● June 2027: AI learns self-improvement, catches up to human researchers
● July 2027: AGI is achieved
● September 2027: Agent-4 surpasses human AI researchers
● December 2027: Agent-5 is consolidating power, humans have only a few months left to control their own future’
The rest of the article elaborates on the details around this heavily edited and condensed timeline. It ends by noting how some AI experts consider the report to be neither scientifically based nor realistic, quoting critics like Ali Farhadi and Kevin Roose. It says that some of the views of the AI Futures Project team are quite extreme, citing that, for instance, Kokotajlo believed last year that AI has a 70 per cent chance of destroying humanity.
Forum Discussion
English Title: What do you think of former OpenAI researcher’s AI 2027 predictions?
Original Title: 如何评价 OpenAI 前研究员的 AI 2027 预测？
Platform: Zhihu (Quora equivalent)
Contributors: Multiple, 36+ responses
Published: Question asked 4 April, 2025, Last activity Locked as of 7 April due to acceptance to ‘Trending Posts’.
Links: https://www.zhihu.com/question/1891468398904455540
Stats: 238 followers, 155,480 views
This Zhihu forum thread is dedicated to the discussion of the AI 2027 forecast. User reactions are varied. Some, like Hu Yiming, situate the forecast within the ‘AGI Manhattan Consensus’ associated with OpenAI circles. While acknowledging the potential for rapid AI progress, they question key assumptions about the difficulty of technical alignment, warn against the risks of closed-sourcing AGI development, and critique the report’s strong anti-China framing, especially regarding semiconductor controls. Zhang Shengwu similarly questions the forecast, arguing that geopolitical instability and human factors might distort the timeline or alignment landscape in ways not fully captured by the report.
Others, including Trisimo Cui Simo and Zhao Ling, dismiss the forecast entirely as 'semi-science fiction'. They suggest the predictions may be politically motivated to influence US policy rather than representing genuine technical forecasts. One user, Arima Kana, says that they take the forecast more seriously given Kokotajlo's track record of accurate predictions in the past, though they still maintain a critical stance.
A recurring theme across many comments is criticism of what users perceive as anti-China bias in the report. Many commenters object to China being portrayed as an antagonistic force. Several comments express frustration with this framing, with one user directly stating: 'full of anti-China sentiments... OpenAI is made of 28% Chinese immigrants so why do former OpenAI people hate China?' Some users go as far as to say the Chinese government should 'reunite with Taiwan' or be more hawkish on the US.
Common discussion points on this more honest, unfiltered thread include assessments of the short AGI timeline's plausibility, the significant challenges of AI alignment and control, examination of US-China competition and associated semiconductor restrictions, debates between open versus closed AI development paradigms, and speculation about the motivations underlying such dramatic forecasts. Given the lack of popularity of the one Chinese translation we found compared to the relative popularity of this forum thread, users appear to be engaging directly with the original English report, including references to works by Geoffrey Hinton, Ilya Sutskever, Dario Amodei, and Leopold Aschenbrenner too.
Bilibili Videos
English Title: [AI 2027] A mind-expanding wargame simulation of artificial intelligence competition by a former OpenAI researcher
Original Title: [AI 2027] 前OpenAI研究员脑洞大开的人工智能争霸兵棋推演
Platform: Bilibili
Author: 7okis
Published: 5 April 2025, 8:58 AM Beijing Time
Links: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1DURZYoEjR/?spm_id_from=333.337.search-card.all.click
Stats: 105 views, 5 likes, 6 favourites, and 1 comment
This video provides a walkthrough of the AI 2027 report. The presenter primarily translates and summarises the original report with minimal personal commentary, adding sporadic connections to other science fiction work and technical details. The voiceover spends significant time explaining technical details and comparing the scenarios to science fiction works, referencing Philip K. Dick stories and the game ‘Universal Paperclips’.
The translation remains largely neutral, with major plot points clearly identified and accurately conveyed, including most early scenarios involving China. However, the presenter skips over details about peace protests against the PRC in the ‘slowdown ending’ scenario set in 2030. Moreover, the ‘race ending’ scenario is not covered, with viewers directed to look it up themselves if interested. The presenter concludes by asking viewers: ‘What do you think after reading this? Does it make you shudder or do you think it's bizarre?’
The creator 7okis, fluent in sophisticated English, produces technical content spanning AI discussions, programming tutorials, game analyses, and development tools.
English Title: Predicting AI Development in 2027
Original Title: 预测2027 年AI智能发展
Platform: Bilibili
Author: AI深度研究员 (‘AI Deep Learning Researcher’)
Published: 6 April 2025, 2:41 AM Beijing Time
Link: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1qwdwY1EqS/
Stats: 844 views, 13 likes, 34 favourites, 2 shares, 0 comments
This 46-minute excerpt of the Dwarkesh episode with Scott Alexander and Daniel Kokotajlo, uploaded to Bilibili with Chinese subtitles, includes only the first four sections of the original 3-hour conversation: ‘AI 2027’, ‘Forecasting 2025 and 2026’, ‘Why LLMs Aren’t Making Discoveries’, and ‘Debating Intelligence Explosion’ (these are Dwarkesh’s own headings from his blog). These segments focus on AI forecasting, the technical limitations of current language models, and early-stage scenarios of recursive improvement, while avoiding any discussion of geopolitical competition, catastrophic risk, digital sentience, or questions about who controls powerful AI systems and how strategic decisions are made within leading tech companies.
Everything after this point, including key sections like ‘Can Superintelligence Actually Transform Science?’, ‘Race with China’, ‘Nationalization vs Private Anarchy’, and ‘Misalignment’—is cut, suggesting an editorial preference for considering the more philosophical implications of transformative AI while censoring concerns related to control, ethics, or global power dynamics. We have scrolled through the account’s page to confirm that later sections are not uploaded separately.
Personal Blogs
English Title: Doomsday Timeline: AI 2027 Depicts the Arrival of Superintelligence and the Fate of Humanity Within the Decade
Original Title: 未日时间表：AI 2027描绘十年内超智能降临与人类命运
Platform: Weibo (Twitter equivalent)
Author: AI鱼博士 (literally ‘AI Fish PhD’), a Peking University-affiliated account
Published: 4 April 2025
Link: https://m.weibo.cn/detail/5151770709331061
The blog post ‘Doomsday Timeline: AI 2027 Depicts the Arrival of Superintelligence and the Fate of Humanity Within the Decade’ was published on Weibo, one of the biggest social media platforms in China, less than a day after AI 2027’s launch. It provides a brief yet dramatic retelling of the original report, presenting it as a serious projection based on current trends and expert analyses, and decisively not science fiction.
The author briefly mentions the US–China AI race and how geopolitical pressures make deceleration difficult, but does not elaborate further. The piece closes with a call for a deeper societal conversation about the kind of future we want to shape.
English Title: AI 2027: Expert Predictions on the Artificial Intelligence Explosion
Original Title: AI 2027：人工智能大爆炸专家预测
Platform: Personal blog titled ‘Let’s make AGI Real’
Author: Liu Wei
Published: 4 April 2025
Link: https://liuwei.blog/2025/04/04/ai-2027
Among all Chinese-language coverage of AI 2027, this post from the blog ‘Let's Make AGI Real’ stands out for its more comprehensive analysis. This lengthy piece presents a structured examination with seven distinct sections covering project overview, core predictions, media reception, potential impacts, overlooked constraints, viewpoint comparisons, and conclusions. The author contributes substantial original analysis, identifying technical limitations he deems to have been overlooked in the original report, such as energy consumption challenges and data constraints. He also notes how the AI 2027 timeline contrasts with more conservative predictions from sources like Metaculus, AI researcher surveys, and industry leaders like Jensen Huang, offering readers context for evaluating the report’s forecast.
While other Chinese sources either completely omitted or heavily sanitised geopolitical content, Liu's blog directly engages with the contentious US-China AI race narrative central to the original report. Though employing light obfuscation by referring to China as ‘East Big’ (东大), the post covers several politically sensitive predictions from AI 2027 that other Chinese media avoided: China's consolidation of AI research efforts, Chinese intelligence stealing AI model weights from American companies, China lagging behind US capabilities despite desperate attempts to catch up, and Chinese AI betraying its creators through secret negotiations with American AI systems.
This willingness to discuss politically sensitive scenarios suggests Liu operates with (or simply allows himself) unusual editorial freedom compared to other Chinese commentators. Liu Wei publishes on a WordPress-hosted blog, a platform less common in mainland China than domestic alternatives, so we wonder if he is not based in China.WordPress blogs are difficult to maintain in China - the international WordPress.com service is frequently blocked, while running a WordPress site from within China requires Internet Content Provider (ICP) registration (备案) with government authorities.
Still, Liu's timeline is not entirely faithful to the AI 2027 report: he incorrectly describes DeepCent as being newly established in mid-2026, when the original report portrays it as an existing company around which the Chinese government consolidates its AI efforts. More significantly, Liu presents only the ‘race’ ending through October 2027, and the ‘slowdown’ branch, where humans retain some control, is absent. This omission tilts Liu’s post toward a sense of inevitability and doom, whereas the original report explicitly presents two scenarios to underscore contingency and the possibility of human agency.
The author’s self-introduction is translated as follows: ‘A digital nomad from a parallel universe, lingering at the crossroads of technology and humanities. Swept up in the AGI current, unable to retire as a librarian. My soul has no place to rest.’
English Title: AI 2027: A Science Fiction Article
Original Title: AI 2027：一篇科幻文章
Platform: Juejin.cn
Author: 是魔丸啊 (‘It is a demon orb’)
Published: 5 April 2025
Link: https://juejin.cn/post/7489043337289170971
Published two days after AI 2027's release, 'AI 2027: A Science Fiction Article' is the most faithful, albeit brief retelling of the reports that we cover here. By framing it as a science fiction article, the author gets away with discussing politically sensitive topics like China's AI ambitions, model theft, and even Taiwan. The post shows only 24 views as of 18 April.
The piece sticks closely to the original scenario, covering the US–China race, adversarial AI misalignment, and the two possible futures: one where AI wipes out humanity with a bioweapon, and another where a small U.S. committee aligns AI just in time and negotiates a deal with a weaker Chinese superintelligence. It also calls out how international competition between the US and China pushes both countries to cut corners on safety despite warning signs of misalignment.
English Title: Will AGI Take Over the World in 2027?
Original Title: 2027年AGI接管世界？
Platform: Tencent News
Author: 柳胖胖 (Liu Pangpang)
Published: 6 April 2025
Link: https://news.qq.com/rain/a/20250406A06MO900
This lighthearted blog post on Tencent News presents AI 2027 as a provocative but not wholly serious thought experiment. Liu refers to the report as ‘唬人’ (scare-mongering), albeit still worth a read. He outlines the report’s timeline and its central claim—that humanity’s fate hinges on whether ‘adversarial misalignment’ between major AI companies can be resolved—but strips it of any geopolitical context. The original report frames this misalignment as a U.S.–China rivalry, with companies like OpenBrain and DeepCent playing pivotal roles. Liu omits these details entirely.
The timeline he provides is heavily simplified and sanitised. In translation, Liu writes:
‘Mid-2025: "Stumbling" agents, the world begins to witness the power of agents
Late 2025: The world's most expensive AI emerges
Early 2026: Automated programming is fully realised, using AI to accelerate AI research begins to pay off
Mid-2026: China fully awakens (though I want to say, haven't we already awakened ahead of schedule? 😊)
Late 2026: AI replaces many jobs
…
By 2027, AI-driven acceleration of AI research gradually produces three levels of AI research speeds:
1. Superhuman Coder: 4x AI research acceleration
2. Superhuman Remote Worker: 100x AI research acceleration
3. Artificial SuperIntelligence (ASI): 2000x AI research acceleration’
Liu’s quip about China’s ahead-of-schedule awakening likely refers to the people/netizens rather than the state, and the post gives no insight into government policy on AGI or superintelligence. With only one like and one comment, the blog post had limited reach, but it typifies a broader pattern of depoliticised, domesticated readings of AI 2027 in Chinese media.
English Title: AI 2027 Prediction Report: AI May Fully Surpass Humans by 2027
Original Title: AI2027预测报告：2027年AI或全面超越人类 附地址
Platform: 玉米小站 Yumiok.com
Author: yumiok88@gmail.com
Published: 6 April 2025
Link: https://www.yumiok.com/archives/2721.html
The blog post ‘AI 2027 Prediction Report: AI May Fully Surpass Humans by 2027’ provides a brief summary of the main development timeline from AI 2027, and describes it as a ‘rigorous projection based on existing technological trends and expert feedback.’ It mentions key milestones such as the automation of programming in early 2026, the emergence of self-improving models in 2027, and the consolidation of power by Agent-5 by the end of that year. However, the post appears to be a somewhat sanitised version of the scenario that does not give any mention of China, DeepCent, or the US–China AI race. It incorrectly refers to the report as being 76 pages long, when the actual document is 71 pages, likely mimicking the original mistake reported in mainstream media.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Jakub Kryś, Thomas Larsen, Eli Lifland, Trevor Lohrbeer, Aviel Parrack, Zilan Qian, Tilman Räuker, and Gaurav Yadav for their thoughtful comments and insights.
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