I wrote the short piece below in early September to help publicize Kai-fu Lee's book and speaking tour.
Artificial intelligence (AI)
used to be a popular sci-fi topic but the idea that the computer can do things
that the human cannot, took a lot longer to come into reality. Even today, AI is far from perfect; a self-driving
car can still run over a pedestrian.
However, thanks to the
development of deep learning in AI, Waymo, the self-driving startup spun off
from Google, is already valued at well over $1 billion despite not yet having a
commercial version that would replace the driver behind the wheel. Deep
learning is the concept that the algorithm can self improve based on the date
fed into the AI program. This is why Waymo vehicles constantly drive around
Mountain View to generate more data and thus keep refining the computer model intended
to replace the human driver.
According to Kai-fu Lee, within
the last three years, deep learning has also enabled China to catch up to
Silicon Valley in AI. Lee has just written a new book entitled, “AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and
the New World Order,” in which he explains that China’s adoption of the
smart phone and mobile computing has allowed China to catch up to Silicon
Valley and in some situations even surpassed Silicon Valley.
Today 800 million smart
phones in China are used in many more ways than in the US and thus can generate
orders of magnitude of more data for their applications based on AI. For
example, the smart phone in China can serve as a digital wallet to send and
receive money. The homeless sitting on the sidewalk can panhandle by dangling
the computer code for the passersby to scan by phone if they wish to donate to
the panhandler’s bank account. The AI algorithm may not be as powerful as that
written in Silicon Valley, but the availability of vast amounts of data can
more than make up the difference.
After getting his PhD in AI
from Carnegie Mellon, Dr. Lee joined Apple and led the development of the voice
recognition system that became Siri. This was even before Steve Jobs rejoined
the company. He then went to China to start R&D centers for Microsoft and
Google before becoming a leading venture capital investor of AI startups in
China. He is certain that AI will be as revolutionary to the world as the steam
engine that led to the first industrial revolution and electricity to the
second.
As part of his book tour, Dr.
Lee will visit the Bay Area to talk about AI, the strides China has made and
the implications for the world. He will speak at the Santa Clara Convention
Center on September 26,
jointly sponsored by The Committee of 100, The Commonwealth Club and NACD,
northern California chapter. Go to
https://mailchi.mp/committee100/committee-of-100-upcoming-event-speaker-series-with-kai-fu-lee-on-ai?e=a984dceae2
For more information and to
register.
The author is a retired
international business consultant, a member of Committee of 100 and occasional
contributor to online Asia Times.
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