53 pages • 1 hour read
AI Superpowers
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Key Figures
Themes
Index of Terms
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaThemes
Entrepreneurship as a Driving Force for Progress
The majority of AI Superpowers is concerned with mapping global economic contests and identifying the qualities of successful business ventures. Kai-Fu Lee’s argument is predicated on the notion that the international AI explosion will result in economic “winners” and “losers.” Winning the global AI race is an unquestioned good in AI Superpowers, despite the resultant jobs crisis, which Lee sees as an inevitable consequence of AI’s development.
Lee predicts in AI Superpowers that the Chinese tech industry will overtake Silicon Valley’s present-day lead. Although Lee acknowledges that this is due in part to “dirty tactics,” he congratulates the Chinese tech ecosystem for its pragmatic and competitive spirit and praises its “gladiatorial” businesspeople:
The messy markets and dirty tricks of China’s ‘copycat’ era produced some questionable companies, but they also incubated a generation of the world’s most nimble, savvy, and nose-to-the-grindstone entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs will be the secret sauce that helps China become the first country to cash in on AI’s age of implementation (24).
Lee is usually agnostic toward the ethical dimensions of China’s rise to success. While he acknowledges the potential ethical pitfalls of gladiatorial business operations and the Chinese government’s social “controls” on scientific research, he implicitly regards them as a worthwhile means to an end.
To some observers in the West, these research achievements fly in the face of deeply held beliefs about the nature of knowledge and research across political systems. Shouldn’t Chinese controls on the internet hobble the ability of Chinese researchers to break new ground globally? There are valid critiques of China’s system of governance, ones that weigh heavily on public debate and research in the social sciences. But when it comes to research in the hard sciences, these issues are not nearly as limiting as many outsiders presume. Artificial intelligence doesn’t touch on sensitive political questions, and China’s AI scientists are essentially as free as their American counterparts to construct cutting-edge algorithms or build profitable AI applications (99).
Though he acknowledges concerns about government interference with research in the social sciences, Lee is largely in favor of its state capitalism insofar as it helps to grow the Chinese AI and tech industries. The metaphor of the AI “grid” is instructive here: Just as governments have always had a necessary role in building the infrastructure that allows private companies to provide electricity to homes, so the Chinese government plays a role in building the infrastructure of the AI revolution. To integrate artificial intelligence into the economy will require large-scale collaboration between disparate industries and access to vast amounts of data—two things that the Chinese system can provide more easily than the American one can: “Bringing AI’s power to bear on the broader economy can’t be done by private companies alone—it requires an accommodating policy environment and can be accelerated by direct government support” (93). The contest between the US and Chinese tech industries is also a contest between two distinct versions of capitalism, and Lee argues that the greater degree of state control of industry in China, far from being a hindrance, is in fact an advantage.
Lee also regards economic success as a necessary condition for technological advancement:
Deep learning’s relationship with data fosters a virtuous circle for strengthening the best products and companies: more data leads to better products, which in turn attract more users, who generate more data that further improves the product (28).
Competition at every level—between individuals vying for jobs, between companies fighting for market share, between nations—fuels innovation, and success leads to more success. To Lee, capitalism is not only good for AI’s development; it is essential.
The Importance of Hard Work and Competition
Lee spends the majority of AI Superpowers discussing the global “AI race” and predicting its winner. He extols China’s competitive verve while explicitly sidestepping the ethical dimensions of “dirty tactics” in business and arguing in favor of a robust role for government in industry. In Chapters 6-8, he lifts his gaze from the competition for AI supremacy to consider how this emerging technology has affected and will continue to affect the quality of people’s lives, including his own. In Chapter 7, “The Wisdom of Cancer,” he presents work and love as implicitly antithetical. However, in Chapter 8, “A Blueprint for Human Coexistence with AI,” he attempts to connect humans’ desire to work with their natural propensity for compassion.
In earlier chapters, Lee argues that human beings derive a sense of identity and self-worth from their work:
Severing these ties—or forcing people into downwardly mobile careers—will damage so much more than our financial lives. It will constitute a direct assault on our sense of identity and purpose. Speaking to the New York Times in 2014, a laid-off electrician named Frank Walsh described the psychological toll of intractable unemployment. ‘I lost my sense of worth, you know what I mean?’ Walsh observed. ‘Somebody asks you “What do you do?” and I would say, “I’m an electrician.” But now I say nothing. I’m not an electrician anymore’ (185).
Outside of his own admittedly unhealthy obsession with success, Lee believes that work—especially “rewarding labor” that contributes positively to society—is integral to humans’ emotional health. His argumentation in Chapter 8 essentially fuses this perspective with Chapter 7’s counterpoint (that work is less important than love). When AI’s mass implementation leads to devastating job losses across industries, Lee believes that an amalgamation of civic-minded gig work and paid volunteerism will fill the emotional and financial void.
This focus on the virtue of labor nests elegantly into the theme of Entrepreneurship as a Driving Force for Progress. Lee believes that the compassionate future he foresees will be contingent on a capitalist system, possibly augmented by “certain guarantees that basic needs will be met” (219). He argues that “compassionate” work (funded by the government and venture investments) will satisfy our desire to work, our propensity for love, and our economic needs. To Lee, the competitive labor market that capitalism breeds is not only essential to scientific progress, but it is also a deciding factor in human beings’ mental and emotional health. He believes that it provides us with work, which in turn supplies us with our personal identities, opportunities to do good, and the tasks which give our lives meaning.
The Connection Between Personal Experience and Professional Acumen
AI Superpowers is one-part speculation on the global AI economy and one-part memoir. The memoir angle is most obvious in Chapter 7, “The Wisdom of Cancer,” which explicitly focuses on Lee’s personal life. However, each chapter in this book includes some combination of personal stories and anecdotal evidence from Lee’s career in AI science and the tech industry. Through all these stories, Lee emphasizes the degree to which his business successes have grown from his direct experiences, both in business and in his personal life.
Lee is Chinese. He spent his early and middle childhood in China, as well as a substantial portion of his career. However, he spent his teenage years, college education, and early career in the United States. Because his life and career have spanned the two countries and their respective tech industries, he has a unique perspective from which to observe the differences and the competition between them. It is from this experience that he derives his critique of Silicon Valley’s “lofty” ideals and its valorization of individual creativity over collective achievement. Describing his decision to leave Google China—the Chinese division of an American company—to found a VC firm dedicated to nurturing Chinese startups, he says:
I made this move because I sensed a new energy bubbling up in the Chinese startup ecosystem. The copycat era had forged world-class entrepreneurs, and they were just beginning to apply their skills to solving uniquely Chinese problems (61).
Coming from most people, “sensing a new energy” might seem like idle speculation. However, Lee’s experience as a successful innovator in both the Chinese and American tech industries positions him to sense shifts in the tech landscape that others might miss.
Lee acknowledges that no one can fully predict what forms AI will take in the future or how it will be integrated into daily life. Part of the challenge and pleasure of his work is in trying to see as far into the future as possible, and he bases his predictions on his own quotidian experience. In Chapter 6, “Utopia, Dystopia, and the Real AI Crisis,” he speculates on what the Chinese grocery chain Yonghui Superstore might be like in the future. He explains how he might personally interface with their customer-facing AI. He describes his diet, his wife, his favorite actress, and his shopping habits. Part of his professional role is to imagine how technology might make a better future, and to do so he draws on his own sense of what is pleasant, valuable, and convenient, using the experience of his own life to make inferences about what will improve the lives of other people.
Chapter 7, “The Wisdom of Cancer,” offers the deepest dive into Lee’s personal life. He confesses to having a big ego, admitting that his determination to achieve maximum business success impacted his ability to connect with his family. He describes his soul-searching process throughout this chapter, explaining his despair and regret upon being diagnosed with lymphoma. Now on the other end of his near-death experience, he shares his new-found wisdom with his readers:
I spend far more time with my wife and daughters, and moved to be closer to my aging mother. I have dramatically cut down my presence on social media, pouring that time into meeting with and trying to help young people who reach out to me. I’ve asked for forgiveness from those I have wronged and sought to be a kinder and more empathetic coworker. Most of all, I’ve stopped viewing my life as an algorithm that optimizes for influence. Instead, I try to spend my energy doing the one thing I’ve found that truly brings meaning to a person’s life: sharing love with those around us (188).
This epiphany represents a turning point in the book, as Lee rethinks his career and considers the broader social impact of AI. The wisdom he gained from his battle with cancer is not only applicable to his personal life but to his professional role as well. Because of this experience, he considers how the values of love, empathy, and care—things that only humans can provide—might form the cornerstones of a new economy.
Unlock all 53 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features: