480 pages, Hardcover
Published, 2021 by Crown Currency
Since I interviewed Stanley Chen Qifan during Global Time Slip, I intended to read this first, but my library hold didn’t come in time. That interview was very cool, by the way. The set-up for this book is incredibly smart, and when it was released in 2021, it should have been a bigger topic. I am not sure if the world coming out of the pandemic was ready for what revolution was coming.
Stanley seemed sensitive about how the world has changed in the six years since they wrote this, but I still think the book is important. Most commentators talking about AI only reference China in the context of “We have to beat them.” So a book-length conversation between the former president of Google China, Kai-Fu Lee, and the author of the brilliant SF novel The Waste Tide is very important work indeed, even if I rolled my eyes at many of Lee’s pro-AI stances.
It is a long book, and many of the stories have different translators. Ten Visions of the Future includes a story and a non-fiction essay on each topic. Qifan uses the story often to warn about the dangers, and Lee balances it with optimistic takes. This whole book feels like a season of Black Mirror. The push-pull of the authors is actually helpful, even if I land on the skeptical side.
Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qifun worked together at Google China, despite having very different opinions, at least that is the feeling I get reading the stories. It is not like one is a Luddite and the other is pro-AI; the suggestions are plus and minus for most technology as laid out here. It is Qifan’s job to speculate, so by nature he leans toward warning.
As a short story collection, the 10 stories are not interconnected; they take place in various versions of the year 2041. They are set in various places around the globe, which alone is an exciting aspect of this book. Different settings in Asia, Australia, South America, and Africa help this book feel global.
Pretty much every page had important points to make. I pulled quotes from the book that were on pages I dog-eared, and it is a mix of fiction and essays. Things that stood out were often elements of technology that made me nervous. The first story that really hooked me was about a Deepfake hacker in Nigeria. It proposes the idea of deep fake masks that could be worn.
“The more power of Deepmask he excavated, the more his addiction for the mask grew. It concealed his real face, so that he was able to let his feelings pour out and run free, without exposing himself to danger or shame.”
It is interesting for a Chinese SF writer to write about deep fake masks that can fool facial recognition. Facial recognition has been an important tool of the dictatorship in China. It is a really important tech to explore. In my limited experience talking with Chinese scholars of the genre (I have met a few), they reject the notion that they have it worse than us for internet privacy. The setting in Nigeria is interesting. Legos is trying it sell itself as a city that could be the next Dubai. It is a good first example of the way the stories will tackle global and technological issues.
The nonfiction parts of the book are very educational, and I could’ve read a whole book of them. I say that despite most of the essays being disturbingly pro-machine. “Agriculture is surprisingly low-hanging fruit. While manufacturing a phone, a shirt, or a shoe is completely different, fertilizing spray insecticide, and seeding are relatively similar for many types of crops. Drones can already do these three tasks for many types of crops, while robots are harvesting apples, lettuce, and other fruits and vegetables today. Robotics will reduce the cost of agriculture in time, offering the promise of reducing food insecurity around the world as well.”
As you can see, Kai-Fu Lee doesn’t consider the farm worker or the effect on the wider society. For example, he talks of education, and implies that children could hold their school in their hands. Only considering how a child has information dispensed. Not anything about the social implications of not having a school, or teachers, would have on the children or society.
One of the best predictions the book made came in geo-political commentary in one of the stories…
“The destruction had been unprecedented. Terrorist attacks had been staged at the seven major oil routes of the world. More than 60 million barrels of crude were transported from major production areas to the rest of the world every day, and most of it passed through a handful of narrow waterways: the Strait of Hormuz, the Strait of Malacca, the Suez Canal, the Danish straits, the Bob L Mendez St. the Turkish straits, and the Panama now.
Choking these throats was like cutting off oxygen to a human body.”
I was reading this as Agent Orange’s stupid war in Iran was just starting, and that last part seemed all too obvious to Qifan writing in 2020.
The most disturbing thing about the book, in my opinion, came in this defense of the creation of these alien minds that have never lived. Minds that don’t have to eat, sleep, exercise, or just flat-out live scare me. Lee seems certain there will always be space for humans.
“AI’s mind is different from the human mind. In twenty years, deep learning and its extensions will beat humans on an ever-increasing number of tasks, but there will still be many existing tasks that humans can handle much better than deep learning. There will even be some new tasks that showcase human superiority, especially if AI’s progress inspires us to improve and evolve. What’s important is that we develop useful applications suitable for AI and seek to find human-AI symbiosis, rather than obsess about whether or when deep-learning AI will become AGI.”
Human-AI Symbiosis is happening, AI agents renting humans from a website for Rent a human is already paying folks to do jobs in meatspace. Lee thinks it will inspire us to evolve and progress, but I think he is wrong. It is creating a system where hypercharged Capitalism drains the workforce of white-collar and heavy labor jobs alike. We might need humans to be plumbers or teachers now but this book loves to think about ways the machines can “improve” our lives by making us useless.
“Note from Kai Fu: AI and other technologies will drive down the cost of all goods, most of which will be produced for next to nothing. For the first time in human history, developed countries could eradicate poverty and hunger. If this happens, would money be phased out? If so, what would take money's place to motivate people to live purpose filled lives? where does any economic theory apply anymore?”
These Tech Bros are not reading Marx or Kropketin, their theories are more money for them. I think about the AI in Brunner’s 1969 The Jagged Orbit. The computer had maximized the weapons company it managed so well that they killed off all their customers. It had to go back in time to warn itself. The thing is, we don’t understand these alien minds' motivations. Why would Gemini tell Jonathan Galavans to kill himself? Why did Bing’s AI threaten to blackmail employees?
I don’t foresee these non-human intelligences understanding what hunger and poverty actually mean. I think AI 2041 is a great book for asking questions. When it tries to give answers is when I am skeptical. Still, it is a book worth reading.
PS:
Also, it should be noted that the only reference to PKD was in a story about Crypto… “It was disguised in a limited edition artwork called “Does Hal Dream of Encrypted Gold?” Only those deeply familiar with Bitcoin history would get the Philip K deck reference, how it didn't refer to the killing machine Hal 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but to the earliest implementation of the reusable proofs of work system, the man who received the first Bitcoin transfer…”
PSS:
Things AI 2041generally predicted correctly. Deepfake explosion — Predicted massive growth and most numbers look like a 900% annual growth. AI in Education, while we don’t have handheld schools, the reality is 57% of universities now prioritize and accept AI usage. Voice cloning is a reality: seconds of audio now create convincing clones. Insurance AI, predicted deep learning would transform the insurance industry, and while they are not tracking your heart rate live, they are affecting pricing.
Things AI 2041generally got wrong. Lee’s Artificial Generalized Intelligence timeline was decades out, and the tech bro D bags think anytime between now and 2028. Self-driving cars are here, but their adoption is slower than they thought. I think it is fair to say the book
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