In August, Elon Musk announced that he was developing a humanoid robot called "Tesla Bot" -- a prototype of which will supposedly be ready in 2022. The presentation itself was slightly bizarre, both because the bot was represented on stage by a dancing human in a bodysuit, and because Musk has warned for years about the dangers of artificial intelligence. But he was right about one thing: AI and robotics could eventually lead to a future where technology is so advanced that our role, much of our work and even our purpose in life could fundamentally change. As someone who has studied and worked in AI for the better part of four decades, my contention is that this change will likely come faster and go further than many of us anticipate -- even if it's driven more by AI-powered software than dancing robots. The question is how we're going to prepare.

Hello my friend, hope you are well! It's my birthday today and I was supposed to be going for an islands hoping trip, unfortunately due to the rising Covid cases we have no choice but to postpone the plan:'(. Thank you for reading my newsletter . This post is public so feel free to share it. Anyway I was just sharing haha!

In 20 years, AI will be able to measure and improve human health as well as help us have more happy moments. The magic of AI rests in its uncanny ability to optimize a given goal in a specific way for each person. AI trains "neural networks" on huge amounts of labeled data; then they use what they've "learned" to mathematically pick out and recognize incredibly subtle patterns within other mountains of data, to maximize the given goal. What if we could use the magic of AI to make us healthy or happy? This is quite doable in the next twenty years, and one of the key points I explore in my new book, AI 2041.

Artificial intelligence operates on a different plane than human reason. As described by various futurists and technologists, AI is literally an "alien mind." In advanced artificial neural networks, the modes of cognition--the logical steps behind any given conclusion--are completely incomprehensible, even to their creators. In the coming years, this nonhuman intelligence will change everything about our personal lives, our social organization, and how we think. That's the premise of two books published back-to-back this year--one from the West, the other from the East. The Age of AI: And Our Human Future is a primer on technetronic civilization for Western policy makers.

SCIENCE FICTION has historically had a contentious relationship with scientific development at the same time that technological products coming onto the market have long relied on rosy narratives for their further popularization. AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future (Currency, 2021), the latest collaboration between science fiction author Chen Qiufan and former head of Google China and current CEO of Sinovation Ventures, Kai-Fu Lee, sits solidly at the intersection of these narrative selling points -- and a selling point is exactly what is being made here. Artificial intelligence, Lee claims in the introduction, is "the world's hottest technology," while Chen posits that "[f]rom the past era to the present day, the unstoppable force of AI has been revolutionizing every dimension of human civilization." Enthusiastic about their vision for a world transformed by AI, the two collaborated on what would become a sort of call-and-response example of "scientific fiction" (as opposed to "science fiction") in which Chen contributed 10 short stories focusing on individual aspects of AI technology set within the next 20 years, while Lee follows up with an explanation of that technology in the present -- how it works, how it is applied, and how it is likely to develop in the coming decades. As a textual product, it is both entertaining and informative, imagining a world that feels at once both familiar and radically different from our own.

Kai-Fu Lee is a Taiwanese computer scientist based in Beijing. After earning his Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon, he worked at Apple and Microsoft before becoming president of Google China, a position he held from 2005 to 2009. Chen Qiufan is a renowned Chinese science fiction writer and the author of the novel The Waste Tide. Listen to the audio version--read by Lee himself--in the Next Big Idea App. As AI and other technologies disrupt the world, we all must familiarize ourselves with the opportunities they pose and the challenges they may create.

Now the threat is artificial intelligence. Or is it really a hope? Only three years ago, computer scientist Kai-Fu Lee published "AI Superpowers," a bestselling guide to the subject. But three years is a long time. In "AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future," Mr. Lee has teamed up with sci-fi writer Chen Qiufan to tell us what's going to happen next.

In this week's blog, I review the fascinating work titled AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future by Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan--a combination of fiction and non-fiction about a future brought about by artificial intelligence (AI) 20 years from now. In the fall of 2018, Dr. Kai-Fu Lee's book AI Superpowers brought broad awareness to the AI advances being made in China. He has now teamed up with science fiction writer Chen Qiufan to bring a combination of science fiction and non-fiction in AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future. The book asks the question "what will the world look like 20 years from now?" There are 10 short stories and an analysis section explaining the role of AI in each story and why that scenario is plausible 20 years from now.

Behind Sahej, hanging on the wall, Nayana could see rows of colorful masks, which, she learned, Sahej had carved and painted himself. On the first day of the new term, the teacher had asked Sahej about the masks, and the new student shyly gave a show-and-tell, explaining how the masks combined Indian gods and spirits with the powers of superheroes. Now, in an invitation-only room on her ShareChat, some of Nayana's classmates were gossiping about Sahej. From the way his room was furnished to the fact that his surname was hidden from public view in school records, these girls were certain Sahej was among the "vulnerable group" that the government mandated make up at least 15% of their student body. At private schools across India, such children were practically guaranteed spots and their tuition, books, and uniforms were covered by scholarships.

Where will today's technologies lead us over the next 20 years, and what will an AI-infused world look like across the globe? Sinovation founder and AI thought leader Kai-Fu Lee and breakout sci-fi author Chen Qiufan (aka Stanley Chen) make an educated guess in "AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future" a set of 10 stories and 10 essays exploring and explaining the potential and pitfalls of AI. After reading the book -- I'll be publishing a review shortly and TechCrunch recently posted an excerpt -- I talked with Lee and Chen at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 about how the collaboration came about, how their points of view coincided and differed, and why they think the future will be how they describe it. Lee and Chen found each other a few years ago -- one a successful thought leader and entrepreneur in AI, the other an author whose incisive depictions of near-future dilemmas earned him international acclaim. They decided to collaborate on a hybrid work that would have narratives born out of informed speculation and expository pieces illustrated by narrative.