China AI Digest (Jul 12, 2026)

Three podcasts, one core sample through the AI economy — silicon, science, salaries. AI Weekly Talk continues its memory series with Samsung: the old storage king that missed HBM, lost the Nvidia slot to SK Hynix, and now bets HBM4, SOCAMM2 and its unique memory-foundry-packaging stack on a comeback. Valley 101 meets the chief scientists of Apodex — Chen Tianqiao's 'discovery model' lab — who say the first full AI self-evolution loop could close within six months; taming recursive drift takes two to three years. And Dafang Says AI+ sees AI splitting the workplace into two poles: copywriters priced out by AI templates, and survivors drowning under doubled quotas.