'Being there' can't be replaced by AI

Since early 2025, when the Chinese artificial intelligence large language model DeepSeek shocked global capital markets, I have felt a growing sense of unease as a journalist. Every few days, I ask myself: Will AI replace me?

That anxiety usually fades amid the daily flood of information, only to return the next morning with news of yet another AI model breakthrough.

Still, I have to admit that AI has also made my work easier. As an English-language writer, AI models have sharply boosted my writing efficiency. That has given me more time to think about a harder question: What can I still do that AI cannot?

My answer is this: At least at the moment, reporters have the advantage of being able to experience the world firsthand with their eyes and ears. It cannot walk into a disaster zone, smell what lingers in the air, or hear what silence says.

So I try my best to go where the news is, to keep taking the world's temperature, instead of staring only at the cold numbers and text on social media.

In July, days of torrential rain triggered devastating floods in Miyun in suburban Beijing, claiming at least 44 lives. I went there and stepped into the homes of those affected.

While I waded forward cautiously, trying to avoid unseen wells beneath the muddy water, villagers around me were already pushing through, eager to check their houses. Half an hour later, I smelled it for the first time: The stale odor trapped inside a sealed home after two full days underwater. It was impossible to describe, and even harder to forget.

During my visits, I came across a retired serviceman in his 60s. He stood quietly in the water, repairing the underside of his small truck, which had been overturned by the flood. With faint optimism, he told me: "If the home is damaged, we rebuild it. Life has to go on."

That same summer, I was back in central Beijing to cover a grand military parade marking the 80th anniversary of the victory in World War II. Along with world leaders watching from Tian'anmen Square, I saw the Dongfeng-5C intercontinental ballistic missile roll past, a powerful signal of China's resolve to uphold the post-war international order.

Some people view such geopolitical messages as a game played only among top policymakers, irrelevant to ordinary lives. But seeing how quickly a flood can overturn one's entire world, I understand that stability and peace are never abstract words. They determine whether people can work with peace of mind, return home safely, and rebuild after disasters. Those hit by the flood, and you and I, all need a world that feels more certain and secure.

As a journalist, what I can do is help more people see those whose lives are shaped by policy, especially those who are often overlooked by decision-makers or by common people like us.

Meanwhile, as an ordinary person, I have begun to share, more deliberately, stories that are easily ignored in my personal social media accounts. In July, six Northeastern University students, who could have had a bright future, died in Inner Mongolia after a grating collapsed during their site visit to an ore plant. In September, three metro cleaners in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, were struck and killed after crossing tracks by what was described as stepping into an "unauthorized route".

Perhaps these stories will not draw much attention. Perhaps they will eventually be forgotten. But I still want to leave something behind: A small trace in the roaring current of information. I hope that when we look back one day, we can still remember what happened, who was swept into the waves, and how easily their fate was turned like a page.

Seen this way, I am not only a reporter covering international affairs and society. I am also documenting how I, as a living person, feel moved and how I feel anger.

I once heard a widely shared sentence: When you look back at your old social media posts and find them foolish, it means you have grown. AI will never have that kind of "foolish moment" because it only delivers the calculated optimal answer. But without those moments that once seemed foolish and naive, how could we become the more clear-eyed versions of ourselves today?

In a future being reshaped by AI, what we may need most is to shed the digital masks and polished personas, and return to a self that is real, even clumsy at times. Because that is something AI can never attain, and it is also the real force that keeps human civilization moving forward.