hardcover, 480 pages
Published Sept. 13, 2021 by Currency.
AI will be the defining development of the twenty-first century. Within two decades, aspects of daily human life will be unrecognizable. AI will generate unprecedented wealth, revolutionize medicine and education through human-machine symbiosis, and create brand-new forms of communication and entertainment. In liberating us from routine work, however, AI will also challenge the organizing principles of our economic and social order. Meanwhile, AI will bring new risks in the form of autonomous weapons and smart technology that inherits human bias. AI is at a tipping point, and people need to wake up—both to AI’s radiant pathways and its existential perils for life as we know it.
In this provocative, utterly original work, Kai-Fu Lee, the former president of Google China and bestselling author of AI Superpowers, teams up with celebrated novelist Chen Qiufan to imagine our world in 2041 and how it will be shaped by AI. In ten gripping …
AI will be the defining development of the twenty-first century. Within two decades, aspects of daily human life will be unrecognizable. AI will generate unprecedented wealth, revolutionize medicine and education through human-machine symbiosis, and create brand-new forms of communication and entertainment. In liberating us from routine work, however, AI will also challenge the organizing principles of our economic and social order. Meanwhile, AI will bring new risks in the form of autonomous weapons and smart technology that inherits human bias. AI is at a tipping point, and people need to wake up—both to AI’s radiant pathways and its existential perils for life as we know it.
In this provocative, utterly original work, Kai-Fu Lee, the former president of Google China and bestselling author of AI Superpowers, teams up with celebrated novelist Chen Qiufan to imagine our world in 2041 and how it will be shaped by AI. In ten gripping short stories, they introduce readers to an array of eye-opening 2041 settings, such as:
• In San Francisco, the “job reallocation” industry emerges as deep learning AI causes widespread job displacement • In Tokyo, a music fan is swept up in an immersive form of celebrity worship based on virtual reality and mixed reality • In Mumbai, a teenage girl rebels when AI’s crunching of big data gets in the way of romance • In Seoul, virtual companions with perfected natural language processing (NLP) skills offer orphaned twins new ways to connect • In Munich, a rogue scientist draws on quantum computing, computer vision and other AI technologies in a revenge plot that imperils the world
By gazing toward a not-so-distant horizon, AI 2041 offers urgent insights into our collective future—while reminding readers that, ultimately, humankind remains the author of its destiny.
Interesting mix of stories. The AI themes are a bit predictable and in the end not very imaginative, but the stories that are spun out of those themes are vivid and colorful. Felt a bit preachy, but an enjoyable ride in the end.
This book rides the line between sci-fi and nonfiction science predictions. The stories are nice, but their main draw comes from the ideas they illustrate about how our world could look in 20 or so years. Each short story is followed by a nonfiction segment explaining what the short story is supposed to illustrate. Those segments are pretty boring as most of what they say can be observed just by reading the short stories and having a little reading comprehension.
The predictions themselves aren't likely to age well. even for their time I think they lack a much-needed political analysis. For technology, they are quite imaginative and consider the interaction between AI and other emerging technologies like AR/VR and 3D printing (fascinating!), but the most they can imagine for emerging politics is UBI and more neoliberalism (boring!).
It's entertaining to read fleshed out stories of potential paths of AI deployment. I found them a tad dystopic. It aims for the general audience, but it also paints over indexes on risk side, which I find better suited for experts that might otherwise not consider them. Hence, it's a bit off on both target audience counts, in my opinion.
There’s a lot to love about this book. Not so much in the stories themselves, although those are mostly fine. Mostly I really liked the future prediction bits, even though I'm not usually much of a non-fiction reader, I definitely enjoyed this. There is definitely also value in the stories in that they depict the future predictions and make them more easily palatable / consumable. Not to mention interesting.
There were several biases present, I thought. But of course everyone has their blind spots. The worst for me was when the author repeatedly claimed that universal basic income would just lead to drug addiction and depression. I also find the idea that autonomous cars could one day drive only inches apart at super high speeds kind of laughable. Maybe on indoor tracks with very good environmental controls, but not in real world circumstances, is my bet.
Overall, this gave me …
There’s a lot to love about this book. Not so much in the stories themselves, although those are mostly fine. Mostly I really liked the future prediction bits, even though I'm not usually much of a non-fiction reader, I definitely enjoyed this. There is definitely also value in the stories in that they depict the future predictions and make them more easily palatable / consumable. Not to mention interesting.
There were several biases present, I thought. But of course everyone has their blind spots. The worst for me was when the author repeatedly claimed that universal basic income would just lead to drug addiction and depression. I also find the idea that autonomous cars could one day drive only inches apart at super high speeds kind of laughable. Maybe on indoor tracks with very good environmental controls, but not in real world circumstances, is my bet.
Overall, this gave me a lot of food for thought, and I'll admit there's a part of me that wants to just go chapter by chapter and give my own takes, but I'm no expert on this stuff, even though I think about it a lot.
An interesting collection of stories and essays about the potential of AI systems in 2041. Each story is about an aspect of AI that is now in development or being deployed (for better or worse) in the world and how it impacts the people in the story. An essay follows each story, explaining how the AI systems in the story work at present and the potential of it to affect how we will live in the near future.
The Golden Elephant: in India, a girl is interested in her classmate. But her family's AI insurance company's app continually makes recommendations to keep her away from him, showing the limitations of a deep learning system that optimizes insurance policies by keeping people away from undesirable actions.
Gods Behind the Masks: in Nigeria, a young man, whose fake video catches the interest of a group who want to discredit a masked political …
An interesting collection of stories and essays about the potential of AI systems in 2041. Each story is about an aspect of AI that is now in development or being deployed (for better or worse) in the world and how it impacts the people in the story. An essay follows each story, explaining how the AI systems in the story work at present and the potential of it to affect how we will live in the near future.
The Golden Elephant: in India, a girl is interested in her classmate. But her family's AI insurance company's app continually makes recommendations to keep her away from him, showing the limitations of a deep learning system that optimizes insurance policies by keeping people away from undesirable actions.
Gods Behind the Masks: in Nigeria, a young man, whose fake video catches the interest of a group who want to discredit a masked political group with another fake video. The solution he uses would involve a 'deep fake' that would provoke a political scandal. But he has second thoughts about the job and needs to find a way out.
Twin Sparrows: an interesting look at a future where custom AIs help to educate children and to direct their growth. The story concerns a pair of twins, each adopted by two families. Each twin has different personalities (one outgoing and competitive, the other withdrawn but artistic). But despite their different lives, they would be drawn back together in their time of need.
Contactless Love: in this future, new variations of COVID-19 continue to appear. One woman isolates herself in her home to keep safe, and finds companionship online. But when her virtual partner tries to surprise her by turning up, but ends up falling ill, she has to fight her instincts to keep safe to be by his side before it is too late.
My Haunting Idol: a detective story set in a virtual world where a dead singing idol appears as a ghost to a fan who wants to solve the murder mystery.
The Holy Driver: in Sri Lanka, a boy who is good at VR racing is given the chance to drive a VR car that feels almost real. Later, he will discover the purpose of the reality simulation and, in a crisis, having to take life or death decisions.
Quantum Genocide: a techno-thriller involving the stealing of Bitcoins that is the trigger for a series of global terrorist events started by one person who wants to get his revenge of humanity. It would take the efforts of an intelligence officer and a hacker to try to stop him.
The Job Savior: in a future where most work has been taken over by AI, a company is tasked with find new avenues of employment for those whose jobs have now gone. But what happens when the company's own business is threaten by AI?
Isle of Happiness: a Russian tycoon who got rich on gaming and other activities finds happiness hard to achieve. So he jumps at the chance of an isle in the Middle East which claims to use AI to offer happiness. But appearance can be deceiving and happiness can be hard to find.
Dreaming of Plenitude: in a future without scarcity, a young helper attempts to get along with an elderly patient to get a reputational boost. But it is only after the patient goes missing with her 3D VR goggles and sees the world in a new light do they discover their common interest in helping the people community to work together.
