AI Superpowers by Kai-Fu Lee

RATING

N/A

N/A = good but not on the scale

1 star = perspective supplementing

2 stars = perspective influencing

3 stars = perspective altering

SHORT SUMMARY (272 words or less)

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I started off excited to read this book, but as it went on, I liked it less and less. Not because of the writing or because of the subject matter. But mainly because of the broad predictions given by the book that I felt were posed with inevitability and infallibility without compelling context. I guess that was the purpose of the book, and maybe I’m to blame for expecting something different. I wanted more commentary that analogized historical economic/technology shifts (printed paper, currency, trade, energy) to emerging AI.

I didn’t finish the book, but from what I read, here are some nuggets:

-China is an ascending AI power in a world where AI will be crucial to economic security and global influence. The author proposes that AI is a winner take all economy, with only a handful of companies in the US and China poised to dominate. That sounds realistic. As a result, the author proposes that the biggest threat of AI is how it will enable widening economic gaps and social strife that derives.

-While we wait for the next AI breakthrough, the volume of data will be what feeds deep learning models and AI industries around the world.

-Chinese startups shifted from emulation to innovation.

-Deep learning/neural networks were once considered a fringe part of AI but now are mainstream. Deep learning does this by taking massive amounts of data to train itself–to recognize patterns and correlations to the desired outcome. This training is easier when data is labeled with the desired outcome (e.g. recognize a cat by looking at billions of pictures labeled cat/no cat).