My Recent Book Read AI Super Powers Kai-Fu Lee

Recent Book Read AI Super- Powers  Kai-Fu Lee 

This book was first published in the year 2018, and what I read is its second revised edition. After three years , the author  still feels that America and China are the major players innovating and adopting AI much faster than other players . He sums up that AI is going to create a new world order.

 The best part is Kai dedicated this book to his mentor Raj Reddy , pioneer of AI .

The culturally influenced, very different approach to research and integration of AI in society is interesting. So the methods to compensate for the loss of jobs and changes in society will be different and it will be interesting to see which strategies will be successful. And wh ether even more beneficial mixed forms from the best Asian and Western approaches will be mixed together.

Politics, especially democracy and economic systems, will be accelerated with the help of the AI, and new, yet unimagined variants will develop. The dalliances and thought experiments with ideas, especially in the economy, will become obsolete. If a concept, at the moment, fails in reality (again and again), one can calculate in advance for the future. The best variants are chosen and respond to unexpected developments, such as those of geopolitical nature, directly and correctly.

Two aspects could benefit China. A larger population means more data and more smart minds. And second politics, through its closer integration with the economy and state companies, enables implementation in dimensions and timeframes that would be utopian in Europe and the USA. The current technology plan of China (as of 2019) alone outshines all other states, in particular concerning automation, robotics and the development and expansion of the branches of science. These two factors will weigh more heavily as soon as the technological advantage of the West has melted away.

The long-overdue implementation of AI in school and university education in China is being driven forward with a concrete plan as well as its use in almost all public areas. And not just by empty phrases like in the West, but based on an intelligent concept with goals and milestones by 2020, 2025 and 2030. In western countries, it is to be expected that, thanks to too much bureaucratization and mutual sabotage of the political parties, the legal aspects will be in just in draft form until then. Not yet decided, as dealing with time pressure one may not expect from these instances, while education systems and research facilities are being cut down and privatized.

At this time, training and work in China will already be robustly connected with AI and create a synergy effect for man and machine. The weaknesses of the Chinese education system concerning the lack of creativity and critical thinking will be eliminated by AI. Individually tailored to pupils and students learning and tutor AIs will accompany them on their educational path, recognize their strengths and promote them better than human teachers 24/7. Thus will, not only many more, but also more creative university graduates emerge from the high-class Chinese universities.

After all, generative adversarial networks (GANs) and deep learning together sooner or later are will steal almost all human jobs the right to exist. And until then 1.4 billion motivated users generate data and improve the systems. What unofficial progress there may already have been made is also an unknown factor, but just with the known technologies, one is speaking of a disruption, the dawn of the machine age. 

It is significant that the victory of various AIs over chess grandmasters has not brought any logical consequence in the West. Namely to massively invest in AI before all other research areas with full resources of the state and private sectors with public-private partnerships. On the other hand, the victory of AlphaGo in 2017 has shaken China up. Why the same events in chess passed by Europe and the US without consequences can be discussed in many ways, but it says a lot about the mentality and prioritization of cultures.

Whether, as examined in the book, ultimately the US, China, Europe , India any other state will take over the leadership, is irrelevant for the development of AI. On the other hand, how the long-term perspective affects global equilibrium is the big deal. Humankind has never created an even more absolute, immediate reacting and intelligent power. Whoever becomes their first master, has an uncatchable advantage and whether this superintelligence can also feel emotions is only a partial aspect. That means that what differentiates us, as humans, from the machine, and makes us unique, is just an unimportant and reproducible aspect out of the spectrum of the AIs abilities.

Because whether the control and steering are cold and logical or spiced with a pinch of empathy, does not change the concept. The ability to understand human emotions, on the contrary, could be misused to manipulate the population even better. That in addition to the statistical and probable calculation, both the group dynamics and the individual parameters of each are included in the calculation key.

AI is already superior in many areas. Whether it is good to teach it feelings and however "humanity" can be coded, is an open question. What if it reveals the cognitive dissonance and contradictions in people's beliefs, personality, self-image, and the ego too obvious? With rationality, the dangers of emotion are exposed. What if the AI is imitating individual biochemical processes and behavioral patterns to make perfect avatars for every human being? What makes the copy different from the original? Could friends and family see a difference? And how much does that reduce the economic value of social interaction if it can be artificially created in all its facets? The implications for the individual and all social networks are far-reaching.

Sometimes an advance is hard to catch up. The requirement of collecting massive amounts of data illustrates the dilemma. It took a long time for the technology, disk space, algorithms, and finally enough data to be sufficient. Those who start merging Big Data and AI at this point benefit from exponential growth. Their AI and algorithms learn on their own, are continually being improved by humans and are self-optimizing. Even if a state succeeds years later in creating the same underlying conditions, its artificial organism is not competitive. As if a child would compete against an experienced and ingenious adult. Nobody knows where the limits of the growth of an AI's abilities are if there even are any that distinguish them from godlike omnipotence.

The result is a scientific singularity that enables the economy and research to accelerate to unprecedented levels. There is nothing to oppose this superior competitiveness and dominance over the world market. Other states are wasting money on expensive, ineffective research for the slow production of non-contemporary products. They have no alternative, as their entire production chains, including engineers and basic researchers, use antiquated methods.

Protectionism in the form of punitive tariffs and trade embargoes are a mute cry for help. Spinning the scenario further reveals that an AI superpower does not need external stimuli except commodities. If you can manufacture everything yourself, it makes sense to weaken other states by not buying their products. To be able to squeeze the raw materials even cheaper from the faltering countries and to buy their remaining economy and government debts to finally dominate it.

It opens up a variety of new geopolitical, social-political and global economic scenarios that completely change the rules of the game. Of course, in a very distant time, the point may come when all states have the best AI, automated manufacturing and so on. But until then, superpowers will be created by the equivalent of the oil of the 21st century, the data in an all-knowing entity.

To end with a quote: "WW1 was the war of chemists. WW2 was the war of physicists. WW3 will be the war of mathematicians." I would add trade war and software engineers/computer scientists/hackers.