The tech soothsayer
Kai-fu Lee is perhaps the only Chinese to have led both Google and Microsoft R&D teams, who also runs a prominent cross-border (US and China) venture capital firm, Sinovation Ventures, and is one of China’s “national treasures”. His remarkable vision imbued with a rare sense of practicality and immense evidence to back it make his books unputdownable. His latest masterpiece AI2041 is a stunningly choreographed tale, with insights that are rich and rare. The book will undoubtedly be one of the most impactful books of our times, with its rich kaleidoscope of storytelling, technology vision and analysis, all woven in one compelling tapestry.
Even as we stand on the threshold of 2022, the velocity of change is exponential. The smartphone in our hands is more powerful than the supercomputers of three decades ago, and by 2023 it is estimated that the average laptop will have as much computing power as the human brain, namely 1016 cycles per second! A 3D printer can create a whole village today in under a month, for less than $5000. Gene sequencing is possible in an hour for $100 (it cost $100 million just two decades ago). Cobots (or co-working robots) costing around $20,000 only are commonplace in several factories of the world. Hyper-spectral data allows us to see what was previously unseen and companies are indexing every single object on the planet, 500 pictures per day @50cm resolution, in a searchable database.
Breathless and unbelievable.
What makes the book one of its kind is the weaving of 10 stories of the world in 2041 across multiple continents and cultures — including India —each accompanied by a deep analysis of the technologies they embody. In fact, this is the strongest and most unusual point of the book —that it weaves in future technology insights alongside futuristic fiction, but some may also find the stories distracting if they were expecting just a serious sequel to Dr Lee’s first book AI Superpowers.
For example, the story that is staged in India demonstrates the power of how artificial intelligence and deep learning impacts the everyday lives of a Mumbai family, while subtly bringing out how it also invokes caste differences. It demonstrates superbly how a middle-class family allows its privacy to be invaded by tech for every decision, and the impact it has on the insurance premium that, in turn, tracks every action of every family member and causes them to either increase or decrease the insurance metric. The story brilliantly demonstrates both the positive and negative externalities of AI, which would hit us all sooner than we imagine. It also demonstrates powerfully how “deep learning” cannot be “explained” to justify decisions made by it, and how a lot of ongoing AI research is on making algorithms fundamentally more interpretable. It also demonstrates how any AI is only as good as the data fed into it, which itself could have both fairness (or unfairness), bias and subjectivity.
From here, Dr Lee takes us to the fascinating world of “deep-fakes” and generative adversarial networks (GAN). Even today commercially available software on phones can make convincing enough deep-fakes, and the world he describes in 2041 is entirely plausible. Set in Lagos, Nigeria, it is a captivating tale of inter-generational conflict, use of “deep-fakes” to fuel a rebellion and popular unrest and the role human conscience plays in all this. If you thought Apple’s facial recognition is world-class, you ain’t seen nothing yet. I had the privilege of watching a demo by one of China’s topmost facial recognition companies, and that too in a crowded Shanghai metro and the results would leave the one shown in the TV series Person of Interest look like a walk in the park!
“Twin Sparrows” shows the power of AI in education and uses of national language processing, while “The Holy Driver”, set in Sri Lanka takes us into the dizzying future of autonomous vehicles (AV). It shows whenever fully autonomous vehicles roam our roads, they will have a profound impact on cost, convenience, safety, parking spaces being repurposed, and, above all, more leisure time. China recently did fullfledged trials of autonomous air taxis and expects to have them in the air by 2023! Imagine having the power to summon an Uber Elevate Air taxi from an app and reading or watching Netflix or catching up on your sleep as it drives you to your destination! Cars are parked 90-95 per cent of the time, and AVS will unlock huge value through both direct and indirect externalities. “The Haunting Idol,” takes one into the mesmerising world of extended/mixed reality, augmented reality, and virtual reality.
What makes AI2041 compelling is that it is rooted in a rare, unusual combination of practicality, vision, and wonder. The practicality and vision come from Dr Lee’s extraordinary career as a tech pioneer and a venture capitalist investing in frontier tech and the wonder is from his co-author Chen Qiufan’s brilliant storytelling. If anyone, anywhere in the world wants to see what tomorrow looks like, AI2041 gives a realistic and incredible peek into the future.