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A review by jamrock
AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley and the New World Order by Kai-Fu Lee
5.0
This was such a surprisingly pleasant and informative read. I think I expected this to have a slight doomsday "impending AI cold war" feel to it but instead I was treated to a book which doesn't relentlessly pursue one argument about the race for AI supremacy but instead weaves a broad tapestry of our AI-augmented world, taking us through various related histories to where we are now before making some informed predictions about the future.
Dr Lee is from Taiwan but his career history spans many years in both the US and China, working as a senior executive in Microsoft, Apple and Google. Some takeaways from this book were:
* the brief history of deep learning, from when it was a poor relation of its knowledge-based sibling, through to its current meteoric, data fuelled rise.
* peering behind the curtain at China's alternate world of Internet and rise of the super apps like WeChat that were both fuelled by AI culture and also accelerants. This is coupled with an insiders view of Silicon Valley start-ups and the rise of VC funding in both countries. I guarantee you will never look at China's Internet the same way after reading this book.
* the clear explanation of the four waves of AI (where we are, I guess, cresting wave three) and a brief exploration of the utopian/dystopian supreme goal of "artificial general intelligence" which when taken to a logical extreme is actually the plot of the Arc of a Scythe series I recently finished reading.
Last but not least a truly inspiring last third of a book that takes a deeply humanistic look at how instead of AI "taking all the jobs" it could free people's time to focus on social projects that robots will never be able to emulate.
A non-fiction book with a feel good ending, who would have predicted it?
Dr Lee is from Taiwan but his career history spans many years in both the US and China, working as a senior executive in Microsoft, Apple and Google. Some takeaways from this book were:
* the brief history of deep learning, from when it was a poor relation of its knowledge-based sibling, through to its current meteoric, data fuelled rise.
* peering behind the curtain at China's alternate world of Internet and rise of the super apps like WeChat that were both fuelled by AI culture and also accelerants. This is coupled with an insiders view of Silicon Valley start-ups and the rise of VC funding in both countries. I guarantee you will never look at China's Internet the same way after reading this book.
* the clear explanation of the four waves of AI (where we are, I guess, cresting wave three) and a brief exploration of the utopian/dystopian supreme goal of "artificial general intelligence" which when taken to a logical extreme is actually the plot of the Arc of a Scythe series I recently finished reading.
Last but not least a truly inspiring last third of a book that takes a deeply humanistic look at how instead of AI "taking all the jobs" it could free people's time to focus on social projects that robots will never be able to emulate.
A non-fiction book with a feel good ending, who would have predicted it?