2026 Chongli Forum Examines AI Life and Next-Generation Creators

Jiazi Guangnian founder and CEO Zhang Yijia released the 2026 AI Lifestyle White Paper at the forum. She said AI is developing across digital, physical, scientific and social worlds, and its influence is extending from food, clothing, housing and transportation to work methods, social roles and self-realization. Zhang said the deeper issue is that AI gives people more opportunities to define themselves. Works that once required professional teams can now be attempted by individuals, and small unnamed needs can become reasons to start a product. “Everyone can express, improve and realize themselves, and can be a director, author and game designer, and a builder of worldviews,” she said.

Yu Minhong, founder of New Oriental, delivered a speech titled “In the Face of Human Richness, What AI Cannot Do.” He encouraged active use of AI but said AI has limits: it can solve tool and efficiency problems, but cannot make final choices for people or provide humanistic care. In education, he said, AI should help children discover interests and stimulate inner motivation, leaving teachers more time to accompany students. Knowledge transmission, lesson preparation and grading can be assisted, but when a child is mocked or frustrated, teachers still need to provide emotional and personal support. Yu called teachers “awakeners of souls” and “guides to growth,” and warned that if technology only lets children do more exercises faster, education’s most important problem remains unsolved. Citing Mencius, he said people should first consider what AI cannot do for them, and what should not be done with AI.

Lai Lipeng, co-founder and chief innovation officer of XtalPi, spoke on “Technology Toward People: Life, Health and Future Living in the AI Era.” He asked how humans can obtain higher-quality lives as they live longer. In his view, AI’s value in life sciences lies in helping humans discover patterns that were previously hard to see and achieve more precise understanding of each individual. XtalPi connects AI design with automated experiments so that drug design results are fed back to models. Efficient molecular design is important, but understanding disease and choosing the right therapeutic direction still depends on the depth of knowledge about complex biological systems. Wujie Evolution, a new company incubated by XtalPi, explores virtual cells and autonomous scientific discovery based on RDS, aiming to let AI participate in analyzing disease mechanisms by proposing hypotheses, designing experiments and validating results. Lai stressed respect for nature and awareness of human cognitive limits.

The forum placed young faces at the center. In the opening “Little Genius Open Mic” session, five next-generation entrepreneurs from physical AI, world models, computing power and robotics discussed “Next Stop, the World!” They talked about how models understand the real world, as well as data, cost, applications and long-term entrepreneurship. The forum also released the 2026 “AI NEXT 20” list, which focuses on people who are still young and in a rapid stage of technological and company growth but have shown the potential to lead next-generation AI technology. In the afternoon, three sessions were held: Intelligent Lifestyle, Chongli AI Film Lab and AI Builders Show. Discussions ranged from whether AI hardware is worth long-term trust, to what still makes a good work in the AI image era, to how young entrepreneurs move from demos to real users and the commercial world. The forum launched the first Chongli AI Short Film Festival, where ten works received the “Top Ten Future Image Award.” AI Builders from across the country held roadshows, and nine teams were named “AI Builders FUTURE 9.” A recurring theme was that AI competition is moving from “what else can it do” to “why is it worth doing, who will use it for the long term, and what it ultimately brings to people’s lives.”

In the pioneer debate “After AI Leaves the Screen, Where Is the Next Entry?,” Mobvoi founder and CEO Li Zhifei said the AI era may not produce a hardware entry as dominant as the smartphone. As AI becomes more proactive, a personal assistant that continuously understands and helps users may matter more than a particular device. Shen Yanan, founder of Habitat Smart Homes and Ngorongoro Robotics, agreed on the role of agents but stressed that integrated software-hardware terminals remain important; spatial intelligent terminals such as smart homes and smart cars will play increasingly heavy roles. Changba founder and CEO Chen Hua judged that breakthroughs in image, video, music, games and programming will each create new application opportunities. SenseTime Healthcare CEO Zhang Shaoting said health consultation and serious medical care must be viewed differently, with the latter still relying on professional hospital services. The discussion did not settle on one device, but pointed to a shift from people actively operating machines to AI actively providing services.

In the “Little Genius Open Mic” roundtable “Next Stop, the World!”, Fu Zhi, Chen Boyuan, Xu Mengwei, Liu Fangfu and Wang Guanbo discussed how AI learns, adapts and acts in a real, open and unknown world. Moving toward the physical world was a shared direction, but views differed on when breakthroughs will come and how world models will develop. Liu Fangfu was more optimistic that models could achieve dynamic adaptation to tasks and environments within the next year, emphasizing self-evolving continual learning and scalable training opportunities in virtual environments. Chen Boyuan focused more on implicit physical laws, action and interaction, and feedback from foundation models in real scenarios; he said the key bottleneck for physical AI is the foundation model pretraining paradigm and the real-world data feedback loop. Fu Zhi and Xu Mengwei reminded that data definition, representation and training methods have not fully converged. The guests also measured models by task needs and cost. Fu said inference demand will be layered, with opportunities for distributed small clusters. Wang Guanbo advocated end-cloud collaboration to meet long-term use at lower cost. Xu chose space, a scenario with relatively clear tasks but strict engineering limits, to show that physical AI applications will advance along different needs. Chen summarized the trade-off: “For general physical intelligence, the requirement is whether the model can complete any task in any real scenario full of uncertainty.” On entering homes, the guests were more cautious. Elder care and child care needs persist, but safety, privacy and technical reliability still affect adoption, and expectations for AI autonomy do not erase human direction judgment. On opportunities for this generation, Fu emphasized working on a ten-year scale starting today. Chen opposed treating physical AI as a stage for a few “little geniuses,” stressing technical accumulation and teamwork. Wang said this generation can start from technology and define global general solutions in specific scenarios, with problem-solving itself providing long-term motivation. Liu put success back into life, hoping AI will ultimately help people “enjoy life, experience life and share life.”

At the end of the opening session, the Chongli Forum and Jiazi Guangnian released the 2026 “AI NEXT 20” list. Unlike seeking star entrepreneurs already in the spotlight, Jiazi Guangnian said it wanted to look earlier and find people who are still young and in rapid growth but have shown potential as next-generation AI technology leaders. Chen Boyuan, Fu Zhi, Liu Fangfu and Wang Guanbo appeared as representatives of the 2026 “AI NEXT 20,” and Thaiwoo President Zhou Wenqian and Zhang Yijia presented awards.

The Intelligent Lifestyle session began with daily questions about what AI should do for people when it enters homes, wearables and companion robots, and what choices should be left to humans. Shen Yanan gave a speech titled “Next-Generation Intelligent Life Starts with Space.” He proposed that next-generation intelligent terminals will provide services in complete spatial forms. A home must first become a software-hardware integrated product, using central computing, fused sensing and unified control to make the home work as a coordinated whole, so AI can move from executing commands to proactive service. Only in a complete smart home can a super “five constant” experience combining higher comfort and lower energy consumption be achieved, he said. In the next step, embodied robots in smart homes will rely on vehicle-road coordination to first provide physical services such as storage and cleaning.

Jiao Teng, a partner at Mingshi Venture, spoke on “The Entrusted Everyday: AI Hardware ‘Takes Over’ Life and Human Blank Space.” He judged that AI hardware is moving from tools to agents and then to taking on users’ entrusted daily affairs, with entrustment representing deeper trust. Products with a real chance need high-frequency use, continuous accumulation of understanding about users and scenarios, and service feedback to improve judgment. Entrustment also means part of life is authorized to machines, so authorization should be visible, reversible and retractable, and the decision process should be explainable. High-value judgments should still be made by humans, and forgetting, hesitation and unrecorded moments should be preserved. He said the goal is to free people from tedious work and leave meaning to themselves.

A panel hosted by Chengmei Capital managing director Wang Di, titled “Next Stop for AI Hardware: Real Demand or Another Round of Smart Device Illusion?,” discussed how AI hardware can reduce user effort while offering value worth continued use. CyboPal founder Peng Tianfang focused on functional value, letting people assign tasks and supervise execution through dialogue at a computer. Xuemeng Future founder Qin Xu said a new computing platform needs new interaction, and the combination of glasses and a neural wristband could bring low-friction, imperceptible and implicit interaction. Guangzhi Shikong COO Gao Xinlu valued imperceptible recording, preserving life moments not actively photographed but worth revisiting later. Snail Sleep co-founder Zhu Dongxiang hoped continuous wear could understand a user’s body patterns throughout the day, rather than only recording sleep and wake times. For emotional products, Kuqiqi co-founder Jiang Jun stressed that characters supported by a role engine can grow sustainably and interact at high quality, helping retain users. Fortune Capital business partner Wang Han used “proactive entrustment” as a criterion: whether users are willing to hand over body data, important conversations and sleep environments to a product. Trust, aesthetics and understanding of real human emotions will affect whether AI hardware can stay in people’s lives for long.

Ren Jingwei, deputy general manager of Yuanshan Zhixing under China North Industries Group, spoke on “Yuanshan Zhixing: The Next Era of Human-Machine Collaboration.” He said the key for exoskeletons entering daily life is moving from sensing human movement to predicting human intention. If a person wants to stop and look at scenery while walking, a device that keeps stepping will cause discomfort. Advances in materials, energy and control algorithms, plus AI recognition of movement intention, have improved human-machine collaboration. He hopes exoskeletons can be worn as easily as clothes and become not just a walking aid but an intelligent wearable platform integrating assistance, body status assessment and motion risk warnings.

Remy co-founder Wang Zhengnan, in a speech titled “Using 3D to Fight Time: Emotional Archiving and Lifestyle Reshaping in the Smart Era,” proposed using 3D to record the three-dimensional world and preserve spatial experiences that photos and videos cannot fully retain. Remy reconstructs videos shot with mobile phones into interactive 3D formats.

Editor's Summary The 2026 Chongli Forum, hosted by Thaiwoo Ski Resort, Jiazi Guangnian and Poquan Culture, gathered more than 700 people to examine AI’s movement into daily life and creative work. It released the 2026 AI Lifestyle White Paper, named the AI NEXT 20 list and launched the first Chongli AI Short Film Festival, while panels debated AI hardware, physical AI and human-machine collaboration. The event highlighted a shift in AI competition from capability alone toward long-term value, trust and real user needs.