AI Superpowers by Kai-Fu Lee

Academic AI breakthroughs hit headlines every month. Just in December 2020, a model surpassed the human benchmark for SuperGLUE (a performance score for several language comprehension tasks researchers are tackling today). Or earlier this year, an article published by the Guardian titled A robot wrote this entire article. Are you scared yet, human? went viral across Twitter and tech circles.

As someone wanting to enter the field of AI and computing, I had to ask myself: are these breakthroughs over-hyped? What does all of this research actually mean? And most importantly, how will it affect the future (and my potential job prospects)?

I turned to Kai-Fu Leeā€™s book, AI Superpowers to get some answers. Dr. Lee is an AI researcher (PhD from Carnegie Mellon University) turned industry expert turned venture capitalist. Throughout his career, heā€™s worked at Silicon Valley tech giants, like Apple and Google, and later started his own venture capital fund in China with an eye towards investing in Chinese AI start-ups. If anyone would have something interesting to say about the future of AI, it would be him.

AI Superpowers brought me these insights:

  • The US has had a lead in AI and information technologies, but whether that lead will be maintained or not depends on the nature of engineering/research roadblocks faced in the near future
  • The battle between the US and China has been described as an ā€œAI arms race,ā€ which may not be a helpful perspective to hold. There are many areas where collaboration and cooperation would accelerate the development of AI rather than competition (e.g. combining data sets)
  • Regardless of who comes out dominant in the space of ML/AI, there will be a further divide between the global north and the global south as China and the US capture much of the benefit from new AI/ML innovations, while countries in South America and Africa scramble to develop their nations
  • Performance for recent AI solutions are (generally) data driven, explaining USā€™s model surveillance capitalism and Chinaā€™s various surveillance policies

What does all this mean?

After finishing AI Superpowers Iā€™m left with some mixed emotions. Reassurance that my career will be stable and I likely wonā€™t have to struggle to hard to find career opporutunities in the near to mid-term future. Some fear and anxiety at the potential political and social unrest caused by the implementation of various AI solutions. And a hint of optimism that we can get the engineering and ethical problems right ā€“ that we can bring about some kind of utopian vision of the future.

At heart, I like to be optimistic about things to come (even if current evidence might be a bit contradictory). But in the case of AI/ML, I honestly do think there are a large and growing amount of scientists, engineers, and politicians who recognize it and are giving it the right amount of attention.

Iā€™d recommend giving the book a skim, especially with an eye towards the first 3-4 chapters outlining Kai-Fu Leeā€™s perspective on how Chinaā€™s tech sector has grown over the years. As an American, itā€™s difficult to find sources that seem level-headed in evaluating Chinaā€™s development and progress over the past decades. And although the bias isnā€™t absent from Dr. Leeā€™s work, itā€™s much better than works Iā€™ve come across in the past. That alone might be enough reason to pick up this book.