Behind Latent Space, ft AIEi Shanghai preview — with swyx and Galen Gao
Shawn Wang sits down with Galen Gao ahead of the inaugural AI Engineer conference in Shanghai to discuss the origins of the AI Engineer movement, the dynamics of Chinese versus American AI builders, and the implications of coding agents on the software industry. They explore how AI agents threaten mid-tier B2B SaaS, the paradigm shift toward System 1 inline decision models like Jev, and emerging interaction frontiers like full-duplex communication and AI safety.
- Most consumer AI apps still rely on turn-based chat, but Shawn Wang tracks Thinking Machines and full-duplex models where human and machine listen and speak at the same time. Read →
- Product taste is the speed at which you narrow thousands of technical choices down to the single design that feels inevitable in hindsight. Read →
- Shawn Wang created the AI Engineer title to separate applied software builders from low-status prompt writers and academic researchers training foundation models. Read →
- San Francisco software companies are trapped inside a B2B SaaS bubble, selling internal software to other venture-backed tech firms, while builders in Shanghai focus heavily on open-source tools like ComfyUI. Read →
- Most developers treat models like external oracles, packaging prompts and begging for structured output over slow API calls. Read →