‘Token economy’ emerging as AI use soars in China, experts tell conference

Chinese tech industry experts say the rapidly increasing use of AI tokens is giving rise to a token-based economy, with the tiny units underpinning Artificial Intelligence services evolving beyond a technical metric and into the basis for delivering and pricing AI services.“The [Chinese] digital economy has gone through the stages of the data economy and the computing economy. Today, the token economy is emerging,” Yin Hao, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said on Wednesday while delivering a keynote speech at the China-internet-conference" class="entity-link entity-event" data-entity-id="161992" data-entity-type="event">China Internet Conference in Beijing.Tokens are the fundamental units that AI models use to process and generate information. They are also the building blocks that underpin tasks ranging from chatbot conversations to image and film-quality video production.