Name: AI Superpowers
Rating: 4.2 (40 reviews)
ISBN: 9781328546395

Kai-Fu Lee

Introduction -- China's Sputnik moment -- Copycats in the Coliseum -- China's alternate Internet universe -- A tale of two countries -- The four waves of AI -- Utopia, dystopia, and the real AI crisis -- The wisdom of cancer -- A blueprint for human co-existence with AI -- Our global AI story

China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

AI Superpowers

Greg Talbot

"With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon." (2014) - Elon Musk As always, there's good news and there's bad news. The bad news is, we seem incapable of solving our more pressing or persistent problems. The good news is, we're getting closer to building a machine that might do it for us. - Jim Vibert (2018) What may our finest achievement and our final undoing, Kai-Fu Lee walks through the history, implementation and forecasting of AI. As one of the prominent researchers in the field, he described AI in a Ph.D. application statement of purpose as "Artificial intelligence is the elucidation of the human learning process, the quantification of the human thinking process, the explication of human behavior, and the understanding of what makes intelligence possible (p.7). Although he looks back at that statement as grandiose, it captures the ambition that is bringing in a this disruptive technology change. Most interesting to me was the philosophical underpinnings of AI. Like many people, i've heard rumblings about driverless cars or the Deep Blue versus Garry Kasparov chess matches in the 1990s, but I wasn't really understanding how the AI was created. Understanding the logic based approach and the neural network approach helps to understanding the reasons for the growth and constrictions within AI knowledge. Another highlight is how Lee points to the government sponsorship of China. Lee gives examples of a culture that has taken the U.S. based AI research and successfully implemented itself into the culture of China. The copy/paste software practices that are allowed, the building of new cities around modern transport, or the general talent that is being usurped by China-tech in the new "spacerace" are all detailed here. Lee brings in some of his own narrative toward the end. A brush with death led him to re-orient his life around the "centrality of love", and he looks at how AI can bring a better life to humanity. He ties his academic research to the very real questions and consequences of an AI-future. Fittingly Lee begins the book by recognizing that the same unbounded questions little kids will ask about our future, are the same type of questions that the scientists in research lab are asking. What machine/human future will evolve, will humans and machines have babies, at what point does human progress lessen for the sake of AI progress.

Adi Suresh 

A very gripping account on the emergence of AI, this is a must read book for futurists. Though its not 100 percent surety that AI would disrupt the work force, one simply can't lean back and take laid back approach, in 10 years time the landscape of human work force will likely be reduced by a 25 %! I did however have a few apprehension as I recently studied about the iridium case,it was billed to be the next big thing in the early 2000's, another case study on similar lines was navtech, that being that and after evaluating both sides of the argument, I can say in good stead that AI will be our century's next industrial revolution only way more faster.

Bouke van der Bijl

** spoiler alert **
           This book is kind of a mish-mash of different topics, it talks about the entrepreneurial environment in China, about what stages AI will go through as it becomes widely deployed in our economy. Then the author reflects on his life after he was diagnosed with cancer, and realizes he’s spending his whole life dedicated to being a public figure, and working at the expense of his relationships. 

The mix of topics, ranging from business to work ethic to love, is good. The thing tying all these together is that the author tries to be realistic about the danger our society faces as we put millions of people out of work, without a guarantee that they’ll have a job to do afterwards, and that we should shift our way we value people from their economic value to the value they bring to society. He stresses we should become more human, as we leave many tasks to the machine.

AI Superpowers China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

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