Yin Qi at WAIC: Three Structural Shifts as Agents Enter the Physical World — New System, New Body, New Network

At the foot of the AGI summit

WAIC 2026 opened July 17 under the theme "Intelligent Partners, Co-Creating the Future." StepFun and Qianli chairman Yin Qi gave a keynote, "When Agents Enter the Physical World." He argues 2026 is a capability inflection point — AI has moved from tasks lasting seconds to working independently for tens of hours — putting the field at the foot of the AGI summit; after natural language, programming is becoming a key yardstick for capability leaps. As agent models fuse with next-gen devices, intelligence moves from screens into the physical world, and agents evolve from chat tools into perceiving-deciding-executing "minimal units of productivity" that let "one person wield a team's capability."

Three structural shifts

• New system (Agentic OS): agent capability is set jointly by model capability and an "agent operating system"; an Agentic OS connecting model to data, tools, interfaces and devices decides "how far an agent can go."
• New body (human-machine symbiosis): device design shifts from "human-centric" to "human-machine symbiosis," with PCs, phones, cars and robots becoming different "bodies" of the same agent across scenarios, enabling continuous presence, free migration and coordinated execution.
• New network (A2A): an A2A network connects humans and agents; agents gain their own identity, capability and credit, autonomously finding partners, organizing collaboration and completing transactions — infrastructure for an "agent economy."

Not just capability, but order

Yin stresses agents entering the real world bring "not just a capability leap but a reordering": the field must answer on whose behalf an agent acts and who bears the consequences, and ensure trusted identity, controllable permissions and auditable behavior, exploring new technical systems, governance and social contracts. His conclusion: the future isn't machines replacing people but people and intelligence co-evolving — as agents enter the physical world, "everyone's possibilities will be amplified tenfold." The "new system–new body–new network" frame echoes WAIC's dense agenda on agent interoperability and Agentic OS.