\n AI and alcohol have three main similarities, according to Beijing bar owner Song De: hallucinations, bubbles and distillation. As AI enthusiasm sweeps across China, Song hopes his bar can ride the wave. He opened AGI Bar, named after the concept of artificial general intelligence where AI systems surpass human intelligence, last year in Zhongguancun, the capital\u2019s high-tech neighborhood in Haidian district. It is now a hub for Beijing\u2019s AI developers, investors and students. \u201cYou\u2019ll see <\/p>\n
l see people sitting around a table coming from different labs, competing companies, and different universities, all chatting about industry trends right here,\u201d said Song, an independent AI developer in his thirties who runs the bar in his spare time.<\/p>\n
Located on Zhongguancun\u2019s Inno Way startup street, the bar is a stone\u2019s throw from the elite Tsinghua University and Peking University, which produce China\u2019s top AI talent, as well as the offices of well-known Chinese and Western tech firms, including DeepSeek and Microsoft. It has hosted parties for Chinese AI labs including Z.ai, and regularly holds developer seminars, open-source AI symposiums and university research meetups.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a very unique and advantageous location,\u201d Song said. \u201cHaidian (district) has always been the heart of scientific research in China. Internet companies are clustered here, and the tech atmosphere, industry investments, and VC incubators provide massive momentum for the sector.\u201d<\/p>\n
Inside, the walls are plastered with logos, colorful figurines and merchandise from China\u2019s major AI firms, while the giant brass gong struck by Z.ai when it listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in January stands proudly outside the entrance.<\/p>\n
The bar is a symbol of China\u2019s drive to use AI to turn its economy into a high-tech powerhouse, which has even led retirees to adopt AI agents and made coding education for primary school children mainstream. The initiative has already brought about some job disruption and prompted universities to add AI to their curriculums.<\/p>\n
DeepSeek tokens for customers<\/p>\n
The bar\u2019s signature drink, also called AGI, is a 9.9 yuan ($1.50) glass of foam. Customers can connect to the bar\u2019s AI agent through Wi-Fi to access free unlimited DeepSeek tokens for coding, which run on two Nvidia DGX Spark computers on display.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe say AI is a future public utility like water, electricity, and the internet. AI should be like Wi-Fi,\u201d said Song, who believes the discovery of AI is more important than the Industrial Revolution.<\/p>\n
The bar\u2019s registered Chinese name means \u201cknowledge distillation\u201d, a tongue-in-cheek pun on liquor distillation and AI model distillation.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst off, it\u2019s an AI technical term for transferring knowledge from large models to small ones, but between humans in a bar, that\u2019s also a form of knowledge distillation,\u201d said Song.<\/p>\n
Bar to add humanoid robots soon<\/p>\n
Although the bar still employs people, Song has automated much of the bar\u2019s inventory, reservation, utilities and membership systems using an AI agent.<\/p>\n
Due to huge demand, Song hopes to expand the bar\u2019s Beijing floor space this year and use humanoid robots, another symbol of China\u2019s innovation drive, to serve customers drinks. He opened a Shanghai branch in June.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve hooked up all our lighting, software, and hardware in the store to APIs for AI processing. We\u2019re trying not to waste human labor on tedious, unnecessary operational tasks,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
However, like many Chinese open-weight models that users can access for a much lower cost than US proprietary AI models, Song has yet to make money.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bar is completely losing money,\u201d he said. \u201cThe amount of drinks given away is definitely 10 times more than what\u2019s sold.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reporting by Laurie Chen. Editing by Eduardo Baptista and Kate Mayberry. All courtesy of Reuters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AI and alcohol have three main similarities, according to Beijing bar owner Song De: hallucinations, bubbles and distillation.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144348,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6744,70539,3013,6010,58,70540,42736],"class_list":["post-144347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-agi","tag-agi","tag-agi-bar","tag-artificial-general-intelligence","tag-deepseek","tag-nvidia","tag-song-de","tag-z-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}