AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future

Thank you for sharing and amazing fictional stories that share light on many of the issues we face today with AI.

Despite serious misgivings, the story sections are uplifting, and many have passed my "grandpa" test to recommend to my grandchildren and kin. Some of the sections, especially "Twin Sparrows" and "The Holy Driver" will thrill my creative gaming grandkids and grandnephews.Also:* "Contactless Love" attempts to explore "AI healthcare" with no mention of "AI cybernetic diagnosis", AI working with doctors to improve what they do, never assuming the sometimes "leap of faith" that clinical medicine can require* "The Golden Elephant", "Gods Behind the Masks", "Quantum Genocide", "My Haunting Idol", explore sci-fi topics like "AI tech bias", "AI deep fake news and promotions", "Alternate currency disasters", "AI alternate reality", which remind me of new sci-fi in the old pulp styleFurthermore:* "The Job Saviour", "Isle of Happiness", "Dreaming of Plenitude" are "Player Piano" AI wannabees. Great stories, that are as off-base and economically off-prediction as the old economic sci-fi pulp silliness was. What's missing and should have occurred with the "Isle of Happiness" reading about Maslow, is the depth of "Brave New World". The interested reader may peruse "Superintelligence" by Bostrom for better informed economic ideas.In younger days, my science fiction reading included "Brave New World" by Huxley, "1984" by Orwell, "Player Piano" by Vonnegut, lighthearted works by Asimov like "The Relativity of Wrong", and various surprisingly engaging sci-fi pulp fiction (which frequently resembles that in "AI 2041", but decades ago, sans AI). Many were great warnings against large private, media, political, and government organizations that reduce, if not destroy, the benefits of a democracy and free market. Although Chapter 2 on "deep fakes" may fit, nothing here really has the depth of the former mastery. In fact, I come away feeling that AI and big data are being promoted, while ignoring serious issues that past sci-fi would have attacked.There is way lots of "techno-babble", some of which is hilariously ill-informed, especially in the last "plentitude: singularity" Chapter 10. Although I'd consider Lee a fellow traveler of sorts, we may disagree about AI and big data "trust corruption", which I predict could inspire an "AI trust winter" worldwide. This would make for great sci-fi, for current times.

The stories are terrific. Kai Fu used his extensive contacts and knowledge network as well as his own incredible depth and breadth of knowledge to think through a roadmap for what he expects AI capabilities will be 20 years from now. He bases his imagination-based forecasting on ongoing actual AI R&D developments, things currently being done by AI start-ups in China, US and other countries, and by his own very well-informed judgement on how to extrapolate today’s current state-of-best-industry-practice with deploying AI to what should realistically be possible at scale 20 years from now.Except - the book does not present this roadmap per say. Rather, the book conveys this information in a much more interesting, imaginative, and highly contextualized way. Based on Kai-Fu’s roadmap and undoubtedly based on intensive conversations and collaborative review with Kai Fu, the science fiction writer Chen Qiufan (aka Stanley Chan) creates 10 stories. Each story is a remarkably high-fidelity portrayal of real, every-day life in the year 2041. The use of AI capabilities at that future point in time is just part of how things happen, woven into the fabric of what everyday reality is, though 20 years from now.Each story revolves around capabilities enabled by a few key AI areas. In this sense, each story has a very focused set of themes it elaborates per AI capabilities. At the same time, the stories are not about the AI per say. Each story is deeply and realistically contextualized so that it is about selected aspects of human life, experience, and interaction, as well as the surrounding human social and political environment in the year 2041. The way each story is crafted, certain AI capabilities are deeply interwoven into what life is like and how things happen. Through the collection of stories, the reader can tangibly grasp and vividly experience how AI will very plausibly be changing the way we live and the nature of our lives and interactions across our personal and work-related dimensions.After each story, Kai Fu gives his analysis of the AI capabilities highlighted in that story. This part is non-fiction. Kai Fu gives his views on where certain AI capabilities will be (those highlighted or implied in that story), and why he thinks this is the case. This supporting analysis, written in an easily understandable and accessible way, is a terrifically informative complement to each of the seemingly very real science fiction stories crafted by Qiufan. The post-story analysis helps to reinforce key points on how the AI capabilities featured in the story are likely to evolve over the next two decades.This really is story telling at its best. It is the best effort I have come across to help one envision and nearly experience how aspects of everyday life and work and the broader social/political environment are likely to be 20 years from now because of the pervasive usage of increasingly capable AI . Yet, there are no assumptions of magic or miracles per future AI capabilities when they envision these human-centric stories set in a future setting. The projections of capabilities 20 years into the future are to a very large extent--- fact and reality based given what is already observable now across the spectrum of leading-edge research to state-of-the-industry-practice deployment. Of course, the two authors do allow themselves to do some very creative, though reality-grounded “imagineering” of this uncertain future, and this allows them to explore new possibilities of how people and society may function within the stories.The approach this book takes of combining “evidence-based” science fiction with supporting post-story fact-based analysis on AI technology directions helps me to envision the forthcoming AI-permeated future 20 years from now better than anything else I have come across. I suspect you will feel likewise after you read this book.