(Yicai) Oct. 27 -- Alan Macfarlane, an 84-year-old social anthropology professor at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, has grown his following to 2.6 million on Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu, known outside China as RedNote, thanks to his enthusiasm for helping young people with various personal problems.

Macfarlane's popularity on RedNote has grown so much that he needed a security escort to reach his vehicle outside the venue of the Sustainability Global Leaders Conference in Shanghai, where he gave a speech on Oct. 21, with many of his fans gathered to see him.

In an interview with Yicai, Macfarlane said he has been to China more than 20 times since 1996, but this year was completely different. People treated him with the same enthusiasm they gave members of The Beatles, while last year, almost no one on the streets knew him.

Macfarlane opened his RedNote account with help from a Chinese friend in May last year. At first, they thought his videos would attract at most 1,000 to 2,000 fans because the content was very academic, Macfarlane being a historian and anthropologist.

But the videos quickly shifted to issues users on the platform cared about, with most followers being aged 20 to 30 and their comments mostly reflecting young people's anxiety and concerns, Macfarlane noted. Comments included questions like is what the meaning of life, what will be my job in the era of artificial intelligence, and how to deal with loneliness and fear in daily life, he pointed out.

Macfarlane said he tried his best to answer questions from his own experience, using young people in the West as a reference and history to illustrate that such anxieties and concerns are not new. For example, during the Victorian era and the "great changes" in the UK, people felt perplexed by these issues, but everyone eventually overcame the difficulties, he stressed.

In addition, Macfarlane has a deep understanding of Chinese civilization, having traveled across the country over the past 30 years. He has studied Eastern and Western civilizations for decades and read many classical Chinese works.

RedNote also gave Macfarlane new ideas for anthropological research, he said. He used to rely on his Chinese students as eyes and ears to observe and understand China, but now he can directly interact with hundreds of thousands of young people, understanding their anxieties and what they are thinking without complicated questionnaires like before.

On why modern youth with "AI friends" are still willing to listen to someone like him, Macfarlane believes people see him as a supplement, drawing on his own personal experiences in his answers, something AI cannot do.

In addition, he said the thought of AI replacing humans does not worry him, because computers only process massive amounts of information and search for probability matches, but will never think like humans based on biology, senses, and real human experience. It's like a horse running much faster than a person, but there is no need for a person to race against a horse, he noted.

AI is AI, humans are humans, and AI is just a tool for humans, he stressed.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Martin Kadiev