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10 Burning Questions We Still Have After ‘Wicked: For Good’

10 Burning Questions We Still Have After ‘Wicked: For Good’

The highly anticipated conclusion to Universal Pictures’ adaptation of Wicked has finally hit theaters, tying together the story we thought we knew about Dorothy’s arrival in Oz. However, we don’t get to see much of the teen girl from Kansas after her house lands on top of the Wicked Witch of the East and she is sent off to see the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) with shoes that don’t belong to her, thanks to Glinda (Ariana Grande) being petty.

Wicked: For Good shines enough on the incredible music and the powerful relationship between Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda to distract from how it very minimally grazes over the beats of L. Frank Baum’s literary classic and MGM’s The Wizard of Oz. Yet, by the end there were so many choices made that left more questions than answers.

We’d hoped for an inspired take by visionary director Jon M. Chu, whose first Wicked installment set up a whole new version of Oz audiences around the world have fallen in love with. While the stage musical focuses on its good and bad witches, its cinematic release centered Nessarose (Marissa Bode), Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), and Boq (Ethan Slater) as part of the ensemble. Along with them, so many setups were left unfulfilled in ways that made us want to take a trip down the yellow brick road for a conversation with the Wizard.

Here are the searing questions that still haunt and hurt us after watching Wicked: For Good.

1. Who supports the Wicked Witch, actually?

Elphie V People Of Oz
© Universal Pictures

There’s not much explanation as to whether Elphaba’s efforts to free the animals have, at least over the years, garnered her any support in between the events of Wicked and Wicked: For Good. Oz hates her for presumably stealing the Grimmerie and helping the animals escape. But she’s also hated by the animals for helping—namely, the winged monkeys and the Cowardly Lion. Meanwhile, Glinda and Fiyero go along with finding her through the Wizard and Morrible’s narrative that she needs to be apprehended but don’t publicly stand up for their friend.

2. Why isn’t Dorothy’s story seen in Wicked?

In the stage musical, it makes sense for the Dorothy of it all to be done in shadowplay, considering it’s not a two-part story. The Broadway audience goes in knowing this is an alternate take on the events of The Wizard of Oz and doesn’t really need to be filled in. Wicked: Part One, however, builds out more of the relationships, including Elphaba’s sisterhood with Nessarose and the meaning of their mother’s shoes.

For some viewers, Wicked was their first introduction to the world of Oz, and the expansion of the story would seem to lend itself to a retelling of Dorothy’s role as a way in to all of the drama between the three witches. That, and there are a lot of Dorothy dolls and figures in playsets that made it feel like we’d get a bit more in Wicked: For Good about how a teen from Kansas is accidentally used as a pawn to kill Nessarose and then enlisted to melt Elphaba.

It’s really a disservice to a character who could have used a a reimagining through Chu’s creative lens to get a new generation of teens to relate to her. I mean, teens being used as political pawns? Evergreen. We get that she’s not a main character here, but she could have been used to solidify Elphie and Glinda’s love for one another, and not as a box to check.

3. Why was Fiyero playing dumb around Tin-Man Boq?

Wizard Of Oz
© Universal Pictures

Yes, Fiyero gets turned into the Scarecrow, who joins Dorothy on the yellow brick road with the lion cub he saved, who seems to have no recollection of him but blames Elphaba for his cowardly nature, and his college friend, who has always been obsessed with his girlfriend and now has a literal ax to grind. In Wicked: For Good, Boq tries to escape the misery of being stuck with Nessa to stop Glinda from marrying Fiyero right before the Thropp sisters make him into a monster, and his motivation is still to get to Glinda even after that. He stares really hard at her from a crowd while spouting off his grievances against Elphaba for saving his life. Meanwhile, Glinda probably still doesn’t recognize Tin-Biq or her role in his male loneliness epidemic victimization. Yet, somehow, we’re supposed to believe he meets this teen girl and suddenly wants the Wizard to give him a heart? And doesn’t Fiyero’s guard suit match the Scarecrow’s outfit? Or does Fiyero say he also hates Elphaba for turning him?

4. When do Fiyero and Elphaba hatch the plan to fake her death?

The poppy field that the Wicked Witch of the West enchants to lull Dorothy and the Lion to sleep (set up at Shiz!) could have helped fill in this blank. There was no exchange between them—other than maybe giving us a moment of Fiyero seemingly turning against her because he’s “dumb” now to fool the audience and Boq—but that we could have later seen as the instant where they quickly hatched a plan before Boq came into the picture.

5. Is Boq still stalking Glinda?

Glinda New Leader
© Universal Pictures

This one haunts me the most because even when he had a heart, he was down bad for her, and then he gets one from the Wizard. So wouldn’t he just go back to being a stalker creep, but now looking more horrifying?  Glinda, you in danger, girl. But in all seriousness: Boq not getting a resolution after getting established as a core ensemble member doesn’t work.

6. Was the Wizard ever thought of as a fraud?

After he leaves Oz upon realizing he just had his daughter killed, he basically takes his balloon back sans Dorothy as per the book. Everyone in the Emerald City is happy to see him go, but why? It’s not because they really hated him; he used them against the animals to create conflict to bolster himself, but to what end? Thanks for doing nothing, I guess.

7. Did no one clock Madam Morrible as the true bad guy besides Elphaba and Glinda?

Witches Of Oz
© Universal Pictures

Morrible puppeteering the Wizard to further her cause against the animals never made sense. It might have had she gotten a backstory as to her hate of animals, maybe being related to Doctor Dillamond for being smarter than her, and knowledge being more respected than power. That kind of framework would have explained her truly wicked need to take it out on animal kind. Also, her punishment? Too tame. She enslaved animals and killed the mayor of Munchkinland. Those monkeys had better have flown her straight to Elphie for real revenge.

8. Why does caging animals remove their ability to speak?

Besides the obvious symbolism, it’s never explained if the cages make the animals normal human-world creatures or if Morrible magicked away their voices. We see Dillamond return to Shiz at the end to teach, but there are no words or any sort of redemption of Elphaba in his class, at least!

9. How does Dorothy get home?

Elphaba gets a whole song about how “there’s no place like home,” a mantra that gets Dorothy home with the tapping of the magic witch shoes, most famously seen in The Wizard of Oz, but that is weirdly set up here with no payoff. There could have been a reprise at Nessarose’s feet, where Elphaba sees that home could never appreciate her, which would a) explain why she chooses to leave Oz with Fiyero, and b) could have been overheard by Glinda to help her come to terms with her role as the Good Witch for the people. It would have been fitting for her to use those words as the spell to affirm herself as a new leader while using it to magic the Thropp slippers to get Dorothy back to Kansas.

10. Why does Elphaba abandon the shoes and Oz?

In Wicked: For Good, Elphaba’s motivation is to stay in Oz to defend it despite it pushing her out, then it’s getting her mother’s shoes back, but after her heart-to-heart with Glinda, it all is just supposed to change. It’s so odd to see her relinquish her fight to encourage her friend to use her pretty privilege for good and find the magic within herself to do what she couldn’t because she’s green. But it’s okay because she’s got her straw prince and walks off to a distant land, which may or may not be the human world. Doesn’t matter.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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#Burning #Questions #Wicked #Good


The price of eggs has become a marker of the state of the economy. But how about the cost of making eggs? Sure, you might be able to do it for next to nothing in your kitchen with nothing but a pan and a burner. But you could also pay $400 for a robot that will do it for you—as long as you don’t want your eggs scrambled, that is.

A new Kickstarter project has finally given us a Juicero for the robotics era, and it’s called E.G.O.R. (that’s Efficient Gastronomic Operational Robot), brought to you by the startup Cheffy. It’s an automated egg maker that promises perfect cracks every time with no shell in the yolk. It has seven different ways that it can cook them up for you, or you can just use it to do the cracking. You can also pair it with a toaster so your eggs and toast finish at the exact right time.

This isn’t something anyone really needs. Cooking an egg over easy takes about two minutes, so calling this a time-saver is a stretch. And if you really don’t want to use the stove, you can buy a basic egg cooker for around $20 almost anywhere. Maybe you’re bad at cracking eggs, but $400 (well, $200 if you get in on the early bird deal) is a lot to pay to not have to pick the occasional shell pieces out.

But hey, the robotics era needed its Juicero moment. To the creator’s credit: it seems like they’re treating this more like a fun novelty (albeit a pretty pricey one) rather than something revolutionary. They also aren’t making you buy proprietary eggs that are required to make the machine work, so they’ve got the Juicero bros beat there.

We’re increasingly seeing robots positioned to do basic tasks. A company called Weave got attention earlier this year with an $8,000 robot that folds clothes. There’s a company in San Francisco offering house cleanings performed by humanoid robots. Last year, 1x made waves by introducing its Neo humanoid robot, which the Wall Street Journal reported “nearly toppled over” while closing a dishwasher and struggled to open the refrigerator.

All of these machines cost an inordinate amount of money to do things that do not cost the average person that much time or money to accomplish. They’re novel, sure. But you don’t have to pay a premium to be a beta tester.

#Robot #Revolution #Juiceroartifical intelligence,automation,Robotics">The Robot Revolution Gets Its Own Juicero
                The price of eggs has become a marker of the state of the economy. But how about the cost of making eggs? Sure, you might be able to do it for next to nothing in your kitchen with nothing but a pan and a burner. But you could also pay 0 for a robot that will do it for you—as long as you don’t want your eggs scrambled, that is. A new Kickstarter project has finally given us a Juicero for the robotics era, and it’s called E.G.O.R. (that’s Efficient Gastronomic Operational Robot), brought to you by the startup Cheffy. It’s an automated egg maker that promises perfect cracks every time with no shell in the yolk. It has seven different ways that it can cook them up for you, or you can just use it to do the cracking. You can also pair it with a toaster so your eggs and toast finish at the exact right time.  NEW: Cheffy just launched a robot that cracks and cooks your eggs. Egor automates breakfast by cooking eggs 7 ways, while Toastr syncs your toast so everything finishes together. -Automatically cracks eggs with no shells or mess-Cooks eggs 7 ways, from sunny-side up to hard… pic.twitter.com/auE3SnfrS3 — Ritwik Pavan (@ritwikpavan) July 30, 2026  This isn’t something anyone really needs. Cooking an egg over easy takes about two minutes, so calling this a time-saver is a stretch. And if you really don’t want to use the stove, you can buy a basic egg cooker for around  almost anywhere. Maybe you’re bad at cracking eggs, but 0 (well, 0 if you get in on the early bird deal) is a lot to pay to not have to pick the occasional shell pieces out.

 But hey, the robotics era needed its Juicero moment. To the creator’s credit: it seems like they’re treating this more like a fun novelty (albeit a pretty pricey one) rather than something revolutionary. They also aren’t making you buy proprietary eggs that are required to make the machine work, so they’ve got the Juicero bros beat there.

 We’re increasingly seeing robots positioned to do basic tasks. A company called Weave got attention earlier this year with an ,000 robot that folds clothes. There’s a company in San Francisco offering house cleanings performed by humanoid robots. Last year, 1x made waves by introducing its Neo humanoid robot, which the Wall Street Journal reported “nearly toppled over” while closing a dishwasher and struggled to open the refrigerator. All of these machines cost an inordinate amount of money to do things that do not cost the average person that much time or money to accomplish. They’re novel, sure. But you don’t have to pay a premium to be a beta tester.      #Robot #Revolution #Juiceroartifical intelligence,automation,Robotics

Kickstarter project has finally given us a Juicero for the robotics era, and it’s called E.G.O.R. (that’s Efficient Gastronomic Operational Robot), brought to you by the startup Cheffy. It’s an automated egg maker that promises perfect cracks every time with no shell in the yolk. It has seven different ways that it can cook them up for you, or you can just use it to do the cracking. You can also pair it with a toaster so your eggs and toast finish at the exact right time.

This isn’t something anyone really needs. Cooking an egg over easy takes about two minutes, so calling this a time-saver is a stretch. And if you really don’t want to use the stove, you can buy a basic egg cooker for around $20 almost anywhere. Maybe you’re bad at cracking eggs, but $400 (well, $200 if you get in on the early bird deal) is a lot to pay to not have to pick the occasional shell pieces out.

But hey, the robotics era needed its Juicero moment. To the creator’s credit: it seems like they’re treating this more like a fun novelty (albeit a pretty pricey one) rather than something revolutionary. They also aren’t making you buy proprietary eggs that are required to make the machine work, so they’ve got the Juicero bros beat there.

We’re increasingly seeing robots positioned to do basic tasks. A company called Weave got attention earlier this year with an $8,000 robot that folds clothes. There’s a company in San Francisco offering house cleanings performed by humanoid robots. Last year, 1x made waves by introducing its Neo humanoid robot, which the Wall Street Journal reported “nearly toppled over” while closing a dishwasher and struggled to open the refrigerator.

All of these machines cost an inordinate amount of money to do things that do not cost the average person that much time or money to accomplish. They’re novel, sure. But you don’t have to pay a premium to be a beta tester.

#Robot #Revolution #Juiceroartifical intelligence,automation,Robotics">The Robot Revolution Gets Its Own JuiceroThe Robot Revolution Gets Its Own Juicero
                The price of eggs has become a marker of the state of the economy. But how about the cost of making eggs? Sure, you might be able to do it for next to nothing in your kitchen with nothing but a pan and a burner. But you could also pay $400 for a robot that will do it for you—as long as you don’t want your eggs scrambled, that is. A new Kickstarter project has finally given us a Juicero for the robotics era, and it’s called E.G.O.R. (that’s Efficient Gastronomic Operational Robot), brought to you by the startup Cheffy. It’s an automated egg maker that promises perfect cracks every time with no shell in the yolk. It has seven different ways that it can cook them up for you, or you can just use it to do the cracking. You can also pair it with a toaster so your eggs and toast finish at the exact right time.  NEW: Cheffy just launched a robot that cracks and cooks your eggs. Egor automates breakfast by cooking eggs 7 ways, while Toastr syncs your toast so everything finishes together. -Automatically cracks eggs with no shells or mess-Cooks eggs 7 ways, from sunny-side up to hard… pic.twitter.com/auE3SnfrS3 — Ritwik Pavan (@ritwikpavan) July 30, 2026  This isn’t something anyone really needs. Cooking an egg over easy takes about two minutes, so calling this a time-saver is a stretch. And if you really don’t want to use the stove, you can buy a basic egg cooker for around $20 almost anywhere. Maybe you’re bad at cracking eggs, but $400 (well, $200 if you get in on the early bird deal) is a lot to pay to not have to pick the occasional shell pieces out.

 But hey, the robotics era needed its Juicero moment. To the creator’s credit: it seems like they’re treating this more like a fun novelty (albeit a pretty pricey one) rather than something revolutionary. They also aren’t making you buy proprietary eggs that are required to make the machine work, so they’ve got the Juicero bros beat there.

 We’re increasingly seeing robots positioned to do basic tasks. A company called Weave got attention earlier this year with an $8,000 robot that folds clothes. There’s a company in San Francisco offering house cleanings performed by humanoid robots. Last year, 1x made waves by introducing its Neo humanoid robot, which the Wall Street Journal reported “nearly toppled over” while closing a dishwasher and struggled to open the refrigerator. All of these machines cost an inordinate amount of money to do things that do not cost the average person that much time or money to accomplish. They’re novel, sure. But you don’t have to pay a premium to be a beta tester.      #Robot #Revolution #Juiceroartifical intelligence,automation,Robotics

The price of eggs has become a marker of the state of the economy. But how about the cost of making eggs? Sure, you might be able to do it for next to nothing in your kitchen with nothing but a pan and a burner. But you could also pay $400 for a robot that will do it for you—as long as you don’t want your eggs scrambled, that is.

A new Kickstarter project has finally given us a Juicero for the robotics era, and it’s called E.G.O.R. (that’s Efficient Gastronomic Operational Robot), brought to you by the startup Cheffy. It’s an automated egg maker that promises perfect cracks every time with no shell in the yolk. It has seven different ways that it can cook them up for you, or you can just use it to do the cracking. You can also pair it with a toaster so your eggs and toast finish at the exact right time.

This isn’t something anyone really needs. Cooking an egg over easy takes about two minutes, so calling this a time-saver is a stretch. And if you really don’t want to use the stove, you can buy a basic egg cooker for around $20 almost anywhere. Maybe you’re bad at cracking eggs, but $400 (well, $200 if you get in on the early bird deal) is a lot to pay to not have to pick the occasional shell pieces out.

But hey, the robotics era needed its Juicero moment. To the creator’s credit: it seems like they’re treating this more like a fun novelty (albeit a pretty pricey one) rather than something revolutionary. They also aren’t making you buy proprietary eggs that are required to make the machine work, so they’ve got the Juicero bros beat there.

We’re increasingly seeing robots positioned to do basic tasks. A company called Weave got attention earlier this year with an $8,000 robot that folds clothes. There’s a company in San Francisco offering house cleanings performed by humanoid robots. Last year, 1x made waves by introducing its Neo humanoid robot, which the Wall Street Journal reported “nearly toppled over” while closing a dishwasher and struggled to open the refrigerator.

All of these machines cost an inordinate amount of money to do things that do not cost the average person that much time or money to accomplish. They’re novel, sure. But you don’t have to pay a premium to be a beta tester.

#Robot #Revolution #Juiceroartifical intelligence,automation,Robotics

The prevailing narrative in Silicon Valley is that Chinese AI models like Kimi K3 and DeepSeek R1 came out of nowhere. But the truth is that even if you never travel to China, there’s an easy way to get a sense of what Chinese AI researchers are up to: log on to X.

In the past year, I’ve seen a steady increase of Chinese artificial intelligence researchers joining X and participating in the wider discourse about AI development and commercialization. Take Moonshot AI, the company behind Kimi K3, as an example. On Thursday, I was able to quickly find around 30 accounts on X run by people who claim to be currently affiliated with Moonshot, including two of the startup’s cofounders, as well as half a dozen former employees and collaborators. And these are not dormant accounts: They talk about Moonshot’s big releases and incremental research papers, make friends with Western researchers, and share details about their personal life and hobbies.

Moonshot is arguably the Chinese AI lab that’s most active on X, but you will easily find executives and technical staff from other leading Chinese startups, like Minimax and Z.ai. Even several employees at DeepSeek, who reportedly are unable to leave China because the government confiscated their passports, regularly post on X about the latest AI news and share job listings to recruit new talent.

“X is the best community” for AI discussions right now, says Meng Fanqing, cofounder of the startup Evolvent AI and a former intern at Moonshot, where he worked on the Kimi K2.5 model. “There are both Chinese and overseas audiences, and the recommendation algorithm works pretty well for showing you content in the same circle that you are in,” he says. Compared with Chinese platforms, where it’s often hard to have serious technical discussions, Chinese researchers like Meng say they would rather spend their time on X.

Meng says he started actively posting on X in mid-2025. At the start of the year, DeepSeek’s R1 model went viral around the world, shining a bright spotlight on China’s AI industry. Many Chinese researchers seized the moment and joined X to start sharing their perspective. “Around that time, all the Chinese researchers are starting to think about branding on an international level,” Meng says.

Chinese AI researchers may also be helping fill a growing gap left by researchers at OpenAI and Anthropic, who have become more reluctant to share their thinking online as their employers have grown into behemoth companies, says Tiezhen Wang, an independent AI analyst and former researcher at Hugging Face. “I guess they feel that their model architecture and how they train the model is kind of a secret, so they’re posting less,” Wang explains. As a result, Chinese researchers are getting more attention from audiences on X who are hungry to make sense of what’s happening in the fast-moving world of AI.

Why Choose X?

One reason X may have become popular among Chinese AI researchers is that there’s not really a comparable social platform in China for high-quality technical discussions about AI and other emerging technologies.

Some people say they used to post on Zhihu, a Quora-like platform that once branded itself as the premier destination for educated professionals to show and tell. But since 2020, Zhihu has increasingly pivoted to hosting fiction content, and expert contributors have gradually fallen off. For example, Deng Yu, a Chinese mathematician who was awarded a Fields Medal this year, publicly wrote on Zhihu in 2018 that he decided to stop posting on the site due to the rise of low-quality content.

#Chinese #Researchers #Finding #Voicemade in china,china,artificial intelligence,x,twitter,rednote,deepseek">Chinese AI Researchers Are Finding Their Voice on XThe prevailing narrative in Silicon Valley is that Chinese AI models like Kimi K3 and DeepSeek R1 came out of nowhere. But the truth is that even if you never travel to China, there’s an easy way to get a sense of what Chinese AI researchers are up to: log on to X.In the past year, I’ve seen a steady increase of Chinese artificial intelligence researchers joining X and participating in the wider discourse about AI development and commercialization. Take Moonshot AI, the company behind Kimi K3, as an example. On Thursday, I was able to quickly find around 30 accounts on X run by people who claim to be currently affiliated with Moonshot, including two of the startup’s cofounders, as well as half a dozen former employees and collaborators. And these are not dormant accounts: They talk about Moonshot’s big releases and incremental research papers, make friends with Western researchers, and share details about their personal life and hobbies.Moonshot is arguably the Chinese AI lab that’s most active on X, but you will easily find executives and technical staff from other leading Chinese startups, like Minimax and Z.ai. Even several employees at DeepSeek, who reportedly are unable to leave China because the government confiscated their passports, regularly post on X about the latest AI news and share job listings to recruit new talent.“X is the best community” for AI discussions right now, says Meng Fanqing, cofounder of the startup Evolvent AI and a former intern at Moonshot, where he worked on the Kimi K2.5 model. “There are both Chinese and overseas audiences, and the recommendation algorithm works pretty well for showing you content in the same circle that you are in,” he says. Compared with Chinese platforms, where it’s often hard to have serious technical discussions, Chinese researchers like Meng say they would rather spend their time on X.Meng says he started actively posting on X in mid-2025. At the start of the year, DeepSeek’s R1 model went viral around the world, shining a bright spotlight on China’s AI industry. Many Chinese researchers seized the moment and joined X to start sharing their perspective. “Around that time, all the Chinese researchers are starting to think about branding on an international level,” Meng says.Chinese AI researchers may also be helping fill a growing gap left by researchers at OpenAI and Anthropic, who have become more reluctant to share their thinking online as their employers have grown into behemoth companies, says Tiezhen Wang, an independent AI analyst and former researcher at Hugging Face. “I guess they feel that their model architecture and how they train the model is kind of a secret, so they’re posting less,” Wang explains. As a result, Chinese researchers are getting more attention from audiences on X who are hungry to make sense of what’s happening in the fast-moving world of AI.Why Choose X?One reason X may have become popular among Chinese AI researchers is that there’s not really a comparable social platform in China for high-quality technical discussions about AI and other emerging technologies.Some people say they used to post on Zhihu, a Quora-like platform that once branded itself as the premier destination for educated professionals to show and tell. But since 2020, Zhihu has increasingly pivoted to hosting fiction content, and expert contributors have gradually fallen off. For example, Deng Yu, a Chinese mathematician who was awarded a Fields Medal this year, publicly wrote on Zhihu in 2018 that he decided to stop posting on the site due to the rise of low-quality content.#Chinese #Researchers #Finding #Voicemade in china,china,artificial intelligence,x,twitter,rednote,deepseek

Chinese AI models like Kimi K3 and DeepSeek R1 came out of nowhere. But the truth is that even if you never travel to China, there’s an easy way to get a sense of what Chinese AI researchers are up to: log on to X.

In the past year, I’ve seen a steady increase of Chinese artificial intelligence researchers joining X and participating in the wider discourse about AI development and commercialization. Take Moonshot AI, the company behind Kimi K3, as an example. On Thursday, I was able to quickly find around 30 accounts on X run by people who claim to be currently affiliated with Moonshot, including two of the startup’s cofounders, as well as half a dozen former employees and collaborators. And these are not dormant accounts: They talk about Moonshot’s big releases and incremental research papers, make friends with Western researchers, and share details about their personal life and hobbies.

Moonshot is arguably the Chinese AI lab that’s most active on X, but you will easily find executives and technical staff from other leading Chinese startups, like Minimax and Z.ai. Even several employees at DeepSeek, who reportedly are unable to leave China because the government confiscated their passports, regularly post on X about the latest AI news and share job listings to recruit new talent.

“X is the best community” for AI discussions right now, says Meng Fanqing, cofounder of the startup Evolvent AI and a former intern at Moonshot, where he worked on the Kimi K2.5 model. “There are both Chinese and overseas audiences, and the recommendation algorithm works pretty well for showing you content in the same circle that you are in,” he says. Compared with Chinese platforms, where it’s often hard to have serious technical discussions, Chinese researchers like Meng say they would rather spend their time on X.

Meng says he started actively posting on X in mid-2025. At the start of the year, DeepSeek’s R1 model went viral around the world, shining a bright spotlight on China’s AI industry. Many Chinese researchers seized the moment and joined X to start sharing their perspective. “Around that time, all the Chinese researchers are starting to think about branding on an international level,” Meng says.

Chinese AI researchers may also be helping fill a growing gap left by researchers at OpenAI and Anthropic, who have become more reluctant to share their thinking online as their employers have grown into behemoth companies, says Tiezhen Wang, an independent AI analyst and former researcher at Hugging Face. “I guess they feel that their model architecture and how they train the model is kind of a secret, so they’re posting less,” Wang explains. As a result, Chinese researchers are getting more attention from audiences on X who are hungry to make sense of what’s happening in the fast-moving world of AI.

Why Choose X?

One reason X may have become popular among Chinese AI researchers is that there’s not really a comparable social platform in China for high-quality technical discussions about AI and other emerging technologies.

Some people say they used to post on Zhihu, a Quora-like platform that once branded itself as the premier destination for educated professionals to show and tell. But since 2020, Zhihu has increasingly pivoted to hosting fiction content, and expert contributors have gradually fallen off. For example, Deng Yu, a Chinese mathematician who was awarded a Fields Medal this year, publicly wrote on Zhihu in 2018 that he decided to stop posting on the site due to the rise of low-quality content.

#Chinese #Researchers #Finding #Voicemade in china,china,artificial intelligence,x,twitter,rednote,deepseek">Chinese AI Researchers Are Finding Their Voice on X

The prevailing narrative in Silicon Valley is that Chinese AI models like Kimi K3 and DeepSeek R1 came out of nowhere. But the truth is that even if you never travel to China, there’s an easy way to get a sense of what Chinese AI researchers are up to: log on to X.

In the past year, I’ve seen a steady increase of Chinese artificial intelligence researchers joining X and participating in the wider discourse about AI development and commercialization. Take Moonshot AI, the company behind Kimi K3, as an example. On Thursday, I was able to quickly find around 30 accounts on X run by people who claim to be currently affiliated with Moonshot, including two of the startup’s cofounders, as well as half a dozen former employees and collaborators. And these are not dormant accounts: They talk about Moonshot’s big releases and incremental research papers, make friends with Western researchers, and share details about their personal life and hobbies.

Moonshot is arguably the Chinese AI lab that’s most active on X, but you will easily find executives and technical staff from other leading Chinese startups, like Minimax and Z.ai. Even several employees at DeepSeek, who reportedly are unable to leave China because the government confiscated their passports, regularly post on X about the latest AI news and share job listings to recruit new talent.

“X is the best community” for AI discussions right now, says Meng Fanqing, cofounder of the startup Evolvent AI and a former intern at Moonshot, where he worked on the Kimi K2.5 model. “There are both Chinese and overseas audiences, and the recommendation algorithm works pretty well for showing you content in the same circle that you are in,” he says. Compared with Chinese platforms, where it’s often hard to have serious technical discussions, Chinese researchers like Meng say they would rather spend their time on X.

Meng says he started actively posting on X in mid-2025. At the start of the year, DeepSeek’s R1 model went viral around the world, shining a bright spotlight on China’s AI industry. Many Chinese researchers seized the moment and joined X to start sharing their perspective. “Around that time, all the Chinese researchers are starting to think about branding on an international level,” Meng says.

Chinese AI researchers may also be helping fill a growing gap left by researchers at OpenAI and Anthropic, who have become more reluctant to share their thinking online as their employers have grown into behemoth companies, says Tiezhen Wang, an independent AI analyst and former researcher at Hugging Face. “I guess they feel that their model architecture and how they train the model is kind of a secret, so they’re posting less,” Wang explains. As a result, Chinese researchers are getting more attention from audiences on X who are hungry to make sense of what’s happening in the fast-moving world of AI.

Why Choose X?

One reason X may have become popular among Chinese AI researchers is that there’s not really a comparable social platform in China for high-quality technical discussions about AI and other emerging technologies.

Some people say they used to post on Zhihu, a Quora-like platform that once branded itself as the premier destination for educated professionals to show and tell. But since 2020, Zhihu has increasingly pivoted to hosting fiction content, and expert contributors have gradually fallen off. For example, Deng Yu, a Chinese mathematician who was awarded a Fields Medal this year, publicly wrote on Zhihu in 2018 that he decided to stop posting on the site due to the rise of low-quality content.

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