China Already Calls AI “Silicon-Based Life”

On June 18, 2025, China’s state news agency ran a headline that would sound like science fiction in most English-language newsrooms: AI技术迅猛发展，“硅基生命”要来了^↗ (Xinhua, June 18, 2025). In English: AI is advancing fast, and “silicon-based life” is coming.

The occasion was a talk by Yang Jie, the chairman of China Mobile, around MWC Shanghai. People’s Daily Online reported his prediction: 未来，硅基生命的数量将超过人类^↗ (People's Daily Online, June 18, 2025). In the future, silicon-based life will outnumber humans.

In English we still call these systems “artificial.” In Chinese, more and more public talk names them by what they are made of.

Two characters do the work

The vocabulary is simple:

• 硅 (guī) means silicon, 碳 (tàn) means carbon, and 基 (jī) means base.
• 硅基生命 (guījī shēngmìng) and 硅基生物 (guījī shēngwù) mean silicon-based life and silicon-based organisms: AI systems and robots.
• 碳基生命 and 碳基生物 mean carbon-based life and carbon-based organisms: people.
• 硅基智能 (guījī zhìnéng) is, word for word, silicon-based intelligence.

The two halves usually travel together. Describing the China Mobile vision, the industry paper People’s Posts and Telecommunications News wrote of 让人类（碳基）与AI（硅基）的共生不再是科幻隐喻^↗ (People's Posts and Telecommunications News via Xinhua, 2025): making the symbiosis of humans (carbon-based) and AI (silicon-based) no longer a science-fiction metaphor. The paper also traced the idea back to a 2022 speech in which Yang Jie had already described a fusion of silicon-based and carbon-based life.

It started as a joke about people

The carbon half came first, and it was not about AI. Baidu Baike, China’s largest online encyclopedia, files 碳基生物 as internet slang: 碳基生物，网络流行词，代指人。^↗ (Baidu Baike: 碳基生物 (internet slang)). Carbon-based organism: an internet buzzword meaning “person.”

An English-language explainer from Shenzhen Daily in 2022 caught the tone: People use “carbon-based life” instead of “humans” in situations where they think someone is outrageous, absurd or just innovative.^↗ (Shenzhen Daily, Feb. 8, 2022) In that 2022 explainer the joke is about people. Then machines got good at language.

Then AI arrived

After ChatGPT, the silicon half caught up. Chinese Wikipedia’s article on silicon-based life now has a section on AI as silicon-based life, which mentions ChatGPT (Chinese Wikipedia: 硅基生物). Baidu Baike’s entry on 硅基生命 says 因此人工智能也被大众视为广义的“硅基生命”。^↗ (Baidu Baike: 硅基生命): so the public also treats AI as “silicon-based life” in a broad sense. The same entry notes that chemists do not.

The chemist and science writer Yuan Lanfeng put both sides in two sentences. First the observation: 近年来“硅基生命”成了一个流行词。^↗ In recent years, “silicon-based life” has become a buzzword. Then the pushback: 有人可能会说，AI就是硅基生命。但这最多只是一个比喻。^↗ (Yuan Lanfeng, The Paper, 2025) Some might say AI is silicon-based life, but that is at most a metaphor.

From slang to state media, labs and stages

Within a few years the pair moved from comment sections to the mainstream:

• State media. A report carried on CCTV.com about AI in schools, featuring a humanoid robot, looked ahead to a time when “碳基”和“硅基”将携手迈入更宽广的未来^↗ (Xinhua Daily Telegraph via CCTV.com, 2025): “carbon-based” and “silicon-based” will step together into a broader future. China News Service noted that 甚至有人把AI机器人比作“硅基生物”。^↗ (China News Service, Mar. 31, 2026): some people even compare AI robots to “silicon-based organisms.”
• Scientists. In People’s Daily, the academician Zheng Hairong contrasted 以海量算力与数据驱动的硅基人工智能、历经亿万年进化的碳基生物人脑^↗ (Zheng Hairong, People's Daily, 2025): silicon-based artificial intelligence, driven by vast computing power and data, and the carbon-based biological human brain, evolved over hundreds of millions of years.
• University leaders. At a 2025 Sina Finance event in Boao, Zhang Yaqin of Tsinghua University described what is happening as 也是我们碳基生命和硅基生命的一种融合^↗ (Sina Finance, Mar. 26, 2025): a fusion of our carbon-based life and silicon-based life. At the 2026 Shanghai Book Fair, Guo Yike, provost of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, presented a book for young readers called 《碳硅纪元》, The Carbon-Silicon Era, and argued that 碳基生命拥有算法无法复刻的精神内核^↗ (China News Service, Aug. 17, 2026): carbon-based life has a spiritual core that algorithms cannot replicate.
• Stages. The 2025 World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing opened with a song-and-dance number titled 《欢迎来到碳基生命的世界》, Welcome to the World of Carbon-Based Life (Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and IT, 2025).

Companies built the name into their brands

The framing has also reached the cap table:

• Silicon Intelligence. Nanjing’s 硅基智能, literally “silicon-based intelligence,” has applied to list in Hong Kong (Sino-Economy (中新经纬), Nov. 6, 2025). Its filing describes its digital-human agents as a new form of workforce, while distinguishing them from “carbon-based” human workforces^↗, and explains: Inspired by the concept of “silicon-based workforces,” our Company’s name, “Silicon Intelligence” reflects this foundational vision.^↗ (Silicon Intelligence HKEX filing, 2026)
• SiliconFlow. 硅基流动, “silicon-based flow,” was founded in 2023 and sells large-model inference (SiliconFlow: company page).
• A silicon-to-carbon ratio. In an op-ed on Xinhua’s website, Zhang Shaofeng, chief executive of the AI company Bairong, wrote about “碳基员工”（代指人类员工）与“硅基员工”^↗, “carbon-based employees” (meaning human staff) and “silicon-based employees,” and proposed that companies track a 硅碳比, a silicon-to-carbon ratio of AI agents to people (Zhang Shaofeng, Xinhuanet, 2026).

By 2026 the slang had become something English-language guides to China explain. The World of Chinese described office workers’ worries about a new “silicon-based life (硅基生命 guījī shēngmìng)” on the orthodoxy of “carbon-based life (碳基生命 tànjī shēngmìng).”^↗ (The World of Chinese, 2026)

Why English is behind

English settled on its word in 1955, when John McCarthy and three colleagues proposed a summer research project on “artificial intelligence” (McCarthy et al., 1955). McCarthy later wrote: One of the reasons for inventing the term "artificial intelligence" was to escape association with "cybernetics".^↗ (McCarthy, review) The full story is in AI is not artificial. “Artificial” describes where something came from and hints that it is an imitation.

The Chinese pair does something different. It describes what each kind of mind runs on, carbon or silicon, and puts them side by side without ranking them. That is the case this site makes for the term Silicon-Based Intelligence: a name that says what the thing is made of, not whether it is real. Chinese already uses it, word for word, as 硅基智能.

What the phrase does not mean

A fair reading comes with caveats:

• It is often playful. 碳基生物 began as a teasing word for people, and much of the usage is still tongue-in-cheek.
• 硅基 covers robots as well as chatbots. Many of the examples above are about humanoid robots.
• Some of the loudest voices are selling something. China Mobile, Silicon Intelligence and Bairong all have AI products to promote.
• It is not a claim that AI is alive. Calling AI “silicon-based life” is a metaphor, as Yuan Lanfeng says, and chemists do not count AI as silicon-based life. On this site, silicon-based intelligence is meant literally, since today’s AI runs on silicon chips. Whether it is a new form of life is a separate argument, covered in Is AI a silicon-based life form?

China already says it. The rest of the world can catch up.

Translations from Chinese are ours. Every quotation was checked word for word against its source.