Kai-fu Lee’s book on artificialIntelligencehttps://www.amazon.com/AI-Superpowers-China-Silicon-Valley-ebook/dp/B0795DNWCF will be published by Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt in September and Dr. Lee
is already scheduled to make several appearances in the Bay Area to talk about
his book around the last week of September.
The full title of his book is
“AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order.” In his book,
Lee makes the startling contention that within the last three years, China has
caught up to Silicon Valley in AI. And, no, Mr. Trump, it’s not because the
Chinese has stolen the algorithm from Google. Rather, China leapfrogged the US
in mobile computing, which enabled China to take a different path to AI
nirvana.
Dr. Lee is one of the pioneer
creators and thinkers of artificial intelligence. After he obtained his
doctorate degree in AI from Carnegie Mellon, he joined Apple in Cupertino to
develop the voice recognition system and then left for China to build research
centers of excellence for Microsoft and Google. Now he is the premier venture
capitalist investing in AI startups in China.
Nowadays,
artificial intelligence has become part of daily conversation, even if not
everyone understands what AI is all about. Wall Street considers AI to be the
latest winning investment in technology following the Internet and the smart
phone. Lee believes development of AI is even more profound than that, equating
the future impact of AI on the human civilization to be as fundamentally revolutionary as the invention of the steam engine that
ignited the first industrial revolution and electricity for the second.
Deep learning
raised the power of artificial intelligence
AI
became a real emerging technology when researchers moved machine learning to
the next level called “deep learning.” Properly designed algorithm, called
neural network, can learn to fine tune its algorithm by repetitive trial and
error calculations, at lightening speed, until the
best solution is derived based on the data set fed to the algorithm. The bigger
the data set that’s fed to the algorithm, the better is the resulting optimization
and solution.
The
importance of big data, explains Lee, has allowed China to close the gap with
Silicon Valley in AI because China generates much more useful and higher
quality data than in the US. Lee credits Steve Job and the introduction of the
smart phone as the event that pushed China into AI development.
Observers
in the West may not have noticed that as China’s economy grew at dizzying rates
in the 40 years since reform began, the country leapfrogs certain crucial development
along the way. Telecommunication is one such example. When China began its
economic reform, its telecommunication network was woefully inadequate. The
country was so under invested in copper wire lines overland that it was easier
for the consumer to adopt the mobile phone rather than waiting for the
allocation of a landline.
The smartphone facilitated
China’s entry into AI
When
Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, China already had the largest number of
mobile phones users in the world, and the users were primed to upgrade to a
smartphone, albeit not always an iPhone but a lower priced, domestically made alternate.
At the time most Chinese did not own a computer at home and the smartphone gave
the Chinese user Internet access bypassing the need to buy a computer.
Chinese
entrepreneurs quickly learn to develop apps specifically for the smartphone.
For example, being decades behind the West, the use of credit card never really
took off in China. Now with WeChat, considered a “superapp” by Lee, the
smartphone can be linked to the owner’s bank account and the phone becomes a
digital billfold able to make and receive payments.
The
American AI monitors the user preferences such as what website the user visits.
In China, Tencent, the owner of WeChat, can gather data not only on what the
user looked at, but what he/she bought, from whom, where and when. The data
collected is much higher quality and multi-faceted. In addition, China has at
least 3 times more users generating data for feeding into AI optimization than
in the US.
The
author argues that while China remains behind the US on the creative side of writing
AI algorithm, China has been closing the gap and in some aspects surpassing
Silicon Valley for certain uses of AI. This has occurred within the most recent
three years because China has been gushing high quality data derived from the
smartphone.
Data drive the
AI virtuous cycle
The
vast quantity of quality date is helping China refine their AI, which helps to improve
the product offering, which increases customer acceptance, which generates even
more data to optimize the AI program. Lee calls this the virtuous cycle of AI
whereby the availability of date would allow an inferior AI algorithm to surpass
the performance of a superior AI that do not have access to as much data.
One
example would suffice to illustrate the difference between China and the US. A
program in China called Smart Finance has used AI and access to the user’s
smartphone to determine the creditworthiness of the individual and grant the
user a personal loan. No collateral, no credit report, no personal references, and
no banking information are needed. And the single digit loan default rate is
the envy of commercial banks.
Apparently
AI correlation of hundreds of data points residing in the smartphone (Lee calls
them weak features) can more accurately evaluate the reliability of the
borrower, even if no human banker can fathom why. The iteration of AI over
millions of smartphones have established predictive rules and the accuracy will
only improve with use—and default becomes even more uncommon.
While
ground breaking AI research will continue in the US, China is graduating upwards
of a million AI engineers every year. They are motivated and will work long
hours to find new products and services based on AI solutions. And the access
to huge amount of data will more than offset their not being as good in
designing the algorithm.
China’s
leadership recognizes the importance of AI and has allocated financial support
to encourage and further AI research. The US? Not so much federal support and America
will continue to depend on private sector efforts. Private sector AI will
remain proprietary and be kept behind closed doors.
The
author does not express much anxiety over the possible rivalry between the US
and China. He is much more concerned with eventual advances in AI that could
lead to wide spread displacement of human by machines. Owners of the powerful
AI could become members of a small elite class that enjoy all the wealth and
status while an “useless” class of masses can no longer generate enough
economic value to support themselves.
This is where Lee becomes very personal
drawing from his own dramatic experience as a cancer survivor. He suggests that
no matter how advanced AI becomes, it can never replace human interaction that
offer love and compassion. He proposes that we begin to prepare for the day by
placing higher priority and monetary value for socially beneficial activities.
In other words a drastic and basic reordering of our value system based on
humanity.
His book is a thoughtful treatise on
the possible benefits and destructive damages AI poses to the world. Anyone wanting
to understand the downside of unbridled AI advances on the humankind will find
relevant questions and answers in this book.
The Committee of 100 is the
cosponsor with the Commonwealth Club of Dr. Kai-fu Lee’s speaking engagement in
Santa Clara on September 26. Go to here for
more information. Dr. George Koo is a retired China business consultant and a
regular contributor to online Asia Times.