Book review of AI Super powers

At first glance, this book by Kai-Fu Lee is not a very eye-catchy book to open. However, open it up and you’ll quickly realize that how comprehensive and timely book it is, and he is probably the best person to share this story. The title of the book sounds political;however, it is much more profound as it not only speculates the new world order but also discusses the age-old dilemmas we have faced as a human race in our quest of taming technology (read AI). What makes this technical topic accessible to readers as Kai-Fu Lee after spending his lifetime in the development and promotion of AI suffers a personal tragedy and is diagnosed with cancer. The situation forces him to question his own life’s priorities and what matters to the human race when existence to do work is at threat. He suggests a novel approach by which we can coexist with technological changes and maximize what makes us human. The beauty of the book lies in the

fact that at one hand it makes you think of the fundamentals of the human existence and life on an abstract level and on the other, it provides a comprehensive history and understanding of development of AI technology starting from western world to being mastered in China as of today. It presents the potential of artificial intelligence to solve problems across sectors and highlights the importance of (having) data (training datasets) for an edge in the AI-driven world. Given the past decade of developments in Chinese market in regard to consumer Internet applications, it has given an edge to China over the US. Hence, the new world order Kai-Fu Lee foresees has a market share of 70% for the US and China out of the wealth created from the AI revolution.

Given that Kai-Fu is an AI freak, he is able to better understand the implication of AI on his own diagnosis of cancer. During the preliminary diagnosis, his cancer is diagnosed as stage IV by the radiologist basis a simple classification (considering only few variables). He realizes how AI can consider many more variables when making such a decision. He was lucky to discover that his case was treatable, and he could survive to share this interesting story with us! Hope you also find inspiration to automate your tasks using AI and spend more time being a human than a work machine!