A review by dhillinck
AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order by Kai-Fu Lee

3.0

Kai-Fu Lee's "AI Superpowers" is really two books in one, each to some extent representative of the ongoing divide between techno-pessimists (e.g., Martin Ford, Hao Jingfang) and techno-optimists (Steven Pinker, Hans Rosling) over the role that artificial intelligence will play in the future of humanity. The first tw0-thirds of "AI Superpowers" offers up a sobering analysis of the race between China and the United States to implement dramatic new advances in AI capabilities. Lee's approach makes it clear that China enjoys distinct advantages in that race (a culture of ruthless entrepreneurial competition, a rich trove of mostly unprotected personal data, and a government willing to devote political and financial resources to achieve supremacy in the field). Fully aware of the potential downsides of a China-dominated AI world, Lee pivots in the final third of his book to the consideration of potential solutions to the inequalities and indignities of such a world. His idea for a "social investment stipend" that will encourage displaced workers to engage in pro-social activities like compassionate care for children and the elderly or education seems insufficient to the scale of the problem. Lee is right to point out that the best hopes of the techno-optimists will not be sufficient either, so credit him for offering up something concrete as an alternative. Nonetheless, if the political and economic upheavals that he describes so compellingly in the first part of his book come to pass, more than just an adjustment to the social contract may be required.