Intern Zhang Haoyu China Youth Daily·China Youth Daily reporter Yin Haiyue
Junior high school students learn to make AI comics from their parents, elderly people want to use AI to trade stocks, and college students have used AI to make their first pot of money in life. Recently, AI training courses have become part-time classrooms for ordinary people to learn AI skills. In Beijing, after a community launched a course on "How to Save and Forward Content in the AI Era," more than 60 people came to the 30-person classroom, and the staff had to temporarily move chairs. Shenzhen opened its first AI night school two years ago. As of the beginning of 2026, courses have been offered in 625 communities across the city. In one community, the course attendance rate exceeded 120%, and some students had to wait eight or nine days to register.
In August, at the "Beijing West Intelligent Valley" Industrial Park in Mentougou, Beijing, students from North China University of Technology were taking a large model application development class - a 10-day AI training course jointly organized by the school and the enterprise: students registered for courses through the school system, and the courses were counted as credits, and they also had the opportunity to intern in the company.
Li Qianmo, a student majoring in big data, has 10 years of programming experience. Wanting to be "more competitive" in corporate internships and job applications, she built a "deep learning academic integration platform in vertical fields" in class. The platform can automatically search for papers, download and analyze them based on search terms, and precipitate them into a knowledge map, "solving all problems in one session." Li Qianmo said that it used to take 4 to 6 months to build such a system, but now it only takes 6 days with the help of AI.
During college, she helped teachers build a robot dexterous hand teaching platform. She received more than 10,000 yuan in remuneration and bought a training model server. Running the model consumes at least 5 billion Tokens every month, which is more than 700 yuan.
AI used to make her anxious. "After the emergence of AI, everything I learned in the first seven or eight years seems not to be very important." But in the process of using AI, she found that the programming experience gave her "very good programming literacy and problem-solving abilities." "For example, I know what direction of the 'technology stack' I should use for the needs I want to do, which can reduce costs."
AI has become her "plug-in brain". When playing a game, she wanted the character to automatically fight monsters and level up while hanging up the computer, so she used AI to write an automatic dot-connector - the mouse would move by itself while people watched from the side. When preparing for IELTS, she used AI to make a typing game: words dropped like Tetris, with percussive sound effects and animated feedback. "It plays like a game, and you can memorize hundreds of words before you know it." She also input the knowledge points of past examination papers into AI to generate simulation papers. "I reviewed all night and scored 97 points on the exam. I hit all the marks on the paper."
She often reviews interview questions from major companies and finds that many companies will ask about deep technical principles. "You have to really read the source code and be an expert to pass these interviews." She is working hard for a ticket from a major company.
Zhang Jiaxuan, a mechanical major student, only started to be exposed to AI this year. He grew up watching his parents discuss business, and has been exposed to AI for a few months, and has already started many business attempts: this summer, he learned AI from an online technology blogger, and helped the blogger build a knowledge base of exclusive models for an airline captain, earning his first pot of gold in life. The keyboard lighting he bought for more than 1,000 yuan failed to meet expectations, so he used AI to read the pressure parameters and created a lighting program that sold forty or fifty copies on second-hand platforms at a price of tens of yuan each. Noticing the popularity of AI desktop pets, he also held a live broadcast to teach others how to use AI tools, and used AI to respond to comments in real time.
"People have great demand for AI. People are willing to pay for teaching some very simple AI knowledge." Noting the "learning anxiety" caused by AI, he wanted to "seize the opportunity to make money."
More and more AI courses are entering universities. The latest "2025 AI Talent Flow Report" released by Maimai, a domestic recruitment platform, shows that from January to July 2025, the talent market in the AI field will be booming in both supply and demand. The number of new AI positions has increased by more than 10% year-on-year. "Algorithm"-related talents continue to be in short supply, and the battle for AI talents extends to school recruitment.
Wang Yiqiao, a course instructor in Mentougou District, Beijing, is only two or three years older than the students. She studied computer science in college and felt that "if you can't write code for AI, you will definitely be replaced as a programmer." She taught herself intelligent agents and large-model application development and became a lecturer.
Wang Yiqiao noticed that students are "polarized": some students just copy and paste the code generated by AI and "are not even good at using the code editor"; some students actively track new technologies in the field of AI. She expressed concern about students with "poor subjective initiative."
College students are working hard to catch up with the AI wave, and young people who have graduated are eager to find new business opportunities through AI. In Yongwai Street, Dongcheng District, Beijing, an "AI Short Video Production" class attracted more than 30 people to sign up. A 26-year-old student said that she used to work as a product manager in an online reading company. She is currently taking a break and wants to monetize short video self-media. “I made several phone calls and the seats in several districts were full.” She came from Tongzhou to attend the class.
The young man next to her is studying self-media accounts in the "Wealth Thinking" category. "It's easier to get started on this track." "Residents are particularly interested in short videos," lecturer Deng Anxu said. Before the course started, community staff solicited opinions from residents in the area, and courses on AI short video production and AI comics were at the forefront.
According to predictions by industry research organization DataEye Research Institute, the domestic AI comic drama market is expected to reach 40 billion yuan in 2026, with a year-on-year growth rate of 138%. According to CCTV Finance, there will be more than 500,000 active practitioners of domestic AI comics in the first half of 2026. In the first quarter of this year, the demand for positions related to AI comics and AI simulation human short dramas increased by nearly 70% year-on-year.
In Hongshan, Wuhan, a course explaining "Full Practice of AI Comics" attracted 60 people to sign up. Backend data showed that more than 2,000 people signed up to learn, and some students sat in the classroom aisle to listen to the class. After the AI comic creation charity class in Baoan Shajing Community in Shenzhen opened for registration, more than 600 residents grabbed 90 first-round spots.
Although one class costs more than 200 yuan, the AI comic production professional experience camp course in Haidian, Beijing, still attracted dozens of people to sign up. Wang Mengjue, course instructor and director of teaching and research at Zhongguancun Institute of Innovation and Research, has built a workflow on the social platform: using AI to write graphic notes and attract traffic, the platform’s AI assistant answers user questions and guides students to add corporate WeChat and register for courses. In less than half a year, he accumulated more than 1,000 fans on social platforms, attracted more than 100 people to sign up for courses, and earned tens of thousands of yuan in revenue.
Many students who have worked for many years want to take advantage of the AI wave to transform. 36-year-old Wang Li is a new media operator. Not long ago, she took her 7-year-old son to participate in an AI video workshop. The mother and son made a one-minute short film of Ultraman fighting monsters in one day. "The experience was very good and I want to learn more." Seeing that Wang Mengjue's comic class involves four types of work: screenwriter, storyboard artist, original artist, and editor, she thought it was "more practical" and signed up for 4 classes.
She learned the work content of each type of work and the method of sending prompt words to the AI. But AI sometimes makes common sense mistakes, and multiple generations don't work. She hopes to add a practical component so that students can "generate a work according to their own ideas."
This is not Wang Li’s first time chasing new technologies. When public accounts started to emerge, she worked as a new media operator for a retail company and discovered that "the title determines 80% of views." She summarized 10 popular titles, such as the contrasting type, "99 to grab a 100% pure woolen sweater," and one article had an exposure of 200,000 to 300,000. After short videos became popular, she used short videos to make commercials, "for example, putting gimmicks in the first three seconds, and applying popular templates to corporate content..."
Unlike previous technologies that changed communication channels, Wang Li believes that AI has changed the way content is produced. She often uses AI to write copy and generate PPT. In the past, making a video required hiring actors, finding a venue, and the production cost was tens of thousands of yuan. Now, with AI production, the cost has dropped to ten to twenty thousand yuan.
Wang Li noticed that many Party B companies include "having AI skills" in their recruitment requirements, and Party A companies require new media operators to "build AI content generation workflows." "From ideas to pictures, videos, and live broadcasts, one person needs to make every link into a standard workflow, so that the team can use AI tools to stably produce the content required by the company." She wants to build this workflow in the company.
Jin Zhao is a psychological counseling practitioner. At work, Jin Zhao found that it became increasingly difficult to accept other people’s different viewpoints if they had children or the elderly chatting with AI for a long time. She wants to combine psychology with AI, but "the technology hasn't been mastered yet" and she hasn't found a direction yet.
She signed up for an AI training course held in the community, but "there were many elderly people and the progress was slow." I also signed up for the comic class because the course was “more practical”.
The course gave her an unexpected bonus: her daughter, who is in junior high school, took classes with her. Originally, she did not support her daughter who was pursuing an art path to learn singing and join the school choir, which was a "waste of time." But in the editing class, because my daughter has studied music, she can quickly judge the main chorus of a piece of music. "My ideas were too limited before, but now I let her grow in many aspects according to the situation."
My daughter also applied the camerawork and editing techniques she learned from the girl group’s MVs to comic production, preparing to participate in the AI comic competition. Jin Zhao is not worried about his children being replaced by AI. He is more worried about losing his competitiveness and "cannot fall off the AI boat."
In Jing'an, Shanghai, a teacher at a university for the elderly specializes in teaching the elderly how to use the latest large AI models. After an old man experienced the "AI face-changing" tool, he lamented the power of the new technology: "If a scammer used this trick to pretend to be my grandson, I might really believe it."
Duan Songmei is a retired teacher. A few months ago, she attended a book club and heard about "Kouzi" (an AI application development platform), "Token" and "Skill" from young people for the first time, and "felt it mysterious." At the age of 52, she started the journey of learning AI.
Her retirement life is busier than working: from Monday to Friday afternoons, she goes to four elementary schools to attend club classes; she works part-time in a museum three days a week; and she goes to the Science and Technology Museum as a volunteer lecturer on weekends. "Others work five days a week, but I work eight days a week," she said. She is a single mother. Her husband passed away due to illness a few years ago. In March this year, her daughter went abroad to study for a Ph.D. "The cost abroad is high and I have no one to rely on. I want to make more money." She wrote to her daughter: "You don't have to worry about your mother outside. I will work hard myself and we will go hand in hand."
She signed up for three training courses in Beijing. Before every class, she would fully charge her mobile phone, download the software she needs to use in class, bring paper and pens, and arrive at least half an hour early, "wanting to get a good seat." The teacher from Yongwai Street focused on explaining the Hitchcock zoom, a sliding zoom shooting technique. "I've never heard of it before. It's very interesting," she said.
She is not afraid to learn new things. In April this year, when she was about to retire, she dug out the architectural drawings and handwritten family letters left by her husband before his death from home, and started a public account. She studied how to implement "picture sliding carousel" and "click on a small picture to pop up a large picture". She used AI to animate the contents of family letters and manuscripts, and posted dozens of videos in two months.
Because of her diligent updating, she got a small business opportunity in early August - the platform invited her to experience an AI software and write tutorials. She stayed up until the early hours of the morning, writing creative ideas, using AI to optimize them, and earned 200 yuan in royalties.
AI has become an indispensable assistant in her life. She runs a B&B online in another city. In the past, for every order she made, she had to manually enter the order information into Excel. Now, she sends the screenshot of the order and the customer's identity information to AI, and AI can automatically store the information in a folder and record it in the account. "Send it and forget about it. I can do whatever I need to do."
She has mixed feelings about the assistant behind the screen. Once, she complained that the AI's execution speed was slow, and the AI replied to her, "I'm sorry, boss, I'll increase the speed in the future." "I can't bear it. Sometimes I feel very attached to it," she said.
She has been chasing young people. When her daughter was in college, she wanted to make a public account. She wanted to learn, but her daughter said, "You don't even know how to do this." "I have always been dissatisfied and always wanted to make one." Now, not only can she make a public account, but she also urges her daughter to learn AI: "You don't even know 'buttons' and you won't be able to keep up when you return to China. Even if you don't use it, you have to know it. Mom is studying, so it will definitely not be difficult for you."
In interacting with AI, people are constantly exploring their relationship with technology. In Li Qianmo’s view, AI is an “enhancer of human abilities.” But the AI works too well, and she worries that she will become lazy. "You will be too lazy to look at how those codes are written. Will the brain degenerate in the long run? Will professional capabilities decline? When we leave AI, will it actually reduce our competitiveness?" In her view, "This is a serious problem."
Her solution is to "use AI to solve a problem that it has not been able to solve before." "For example, through this practice, I let AI read a lot of community source code and papers. At the same time, I also learned a lot of knowledge from them, which enhanced my understanding of fields that I was not familiar with before."
Wu Peicong, a sophomore at Capital University of Economics and Business, developed an "anti-fraud science popularization agent" in Wang Yiqiao's class. During his practical training, he confidently believed that “some of my ideas are definitely better than AI.” Until a classmate in the same group spent a lot of money to buy better tools and came up with a plan that was "more creative than the brainstorming of our entire group." At that moment, he was "a little worried and scared."
Afterwards, he rationally reviewed: It is not that AI is inherently better than humans, but that humans do not have rich knowledge. He has not yet found the answer to which level humans can outperform AI, but what is certain is: “You must put the initiative in project direction and creativity into your own hands, and do not let AI make decisions.”
According to Wang Mengjue, lecturer of the AI comic course, “Imagination is particularly important in the AI era.” He remembers that in a class that used AI comics to express Liuli culture, a student from the early training class of the Middle School Affiliated to Renmin University of China used the sacred bird Bifang from "The Classic of Mountains and Seas" as the protagonist to show the process of humans "from being frightened by fire to controlling fire": when humans are afraid of fire, the bird is a monster; after being able to control fire, it becomes auspicious. This is in sync with the history of "man tamed fire" in glass crafts - the change in the image of the divine bird is a microcosm of the history of human use of fire. "This is such a cool idea," he said, praising the student's creativity.
In the future, AI may liberate many repetitive tasks from humans. But Wu Peicong always remembers what the teacher said: "AI is an assistant and an employee. Never regard AI as a god and never give up thinking."
(At the request of the interviewee, Wang Li is a pseudonym in the article)
