From the question “Can machines think?” to the arrival of language models, AI image generation, and AI programming in everyday life, technological development continually produces new questions. The 2025 Fangtang Forum used “When Machines Begin to Think, Where Do Humans Go?” to frame three directions for public discussion.
How people find their place
As the relationship between people and machines needs to be redefined, how should human qualities, virtues, and the meaning of life be understood? The Forum connected superintelligence, social distribution, work, education, intimate relations, and truthfulness to lived human conditions.
Whether people can guide AI
Through questions of fear, consciousness, moral risk, and value alignment, the Forum considered whether people can sustain judgment and responsibility amid rapid technical change, and discussed theoretical and practical approaches to guiding AI.
How society changes
AI’s effects on employment, the authority of knowledge, identity, social organization, and ethical traditions mean that technical questions are also social questions. The Forum invited participants from different fields to consider possible responses together.
- Fangtang Forum
- artificial intelligence