Reddit reviews AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

I STRONGLY recommend reading his book, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order. https://www.amazon.com/AI-Superpowers-China-Silicon-Valley/dp/132854639X

​

Also, I think that Kai-fu Lee would make an excellent US Ambassador to China under President Yang

I guess he can always say "people I know in Silicone Valley." But that would sound like Trump's exaggeration/lying. Besides, what if those "people" are actually his friends. I will be very surprised if he and Kai-Fu Lee are not friends. Silicone Valley is littered with people with Asian persuasion, be it East or South. If he kept his mouth shut about his relationships there, then you can imagine some people accusing him of trying to cover up his "techbro" cred. Anyway, transparency is the best policy.
Edit: BTW, Yang is not a techbro. Not sure why people think he is.

PARIS — In the 1950s, French President Charles de Gaulle understood that if France wanted to create its own space for sovereign action in a world dominated by the United states and the Soviet Union, it had to possess its own nuclear force. Today, in the emerging global order dominated by the United States and China, artificial intelligence has become the most powerful resource that will determine the fate of nations in the times ahead. The only chance for not just France but Europe as a whole to remain a player is to participate fully in the development of AI.

The robust competition between America and China is accelerating the rapid evolution of machine learning, which will transform all aspects of life from employment and the social contract to genetic engineering and warfare. The pace of change is so swift that being left behind will make it nearly impossible to catch up. If that happens, Europe will become irretrievably subordinated to the geopolitical algorithms of others.

A new book by AI technologist and entrepreneur Kai-Fu Lee, “AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley and the New World Order,” ought to serve as a loud wakeup call for Europe. Not surprisingly, Europe warrants little ink in Lee’s book. As Lee sees it, while Silicon Valley and China are driving each other forward in the advance of AI, with an entrepreneurial frenzy abetted by abundant capital and a densely connected consumer base, Europe lacks a comparable innovation ecosystem or integrated digital marketplace. Its default alternative has been simply to accept the full platforms of the likes of Google, Facebook and Twitter. In essence, Europe has become a colony in the American tech empire.

Because emergent technologies arise in response to social demand, Lee does, however, see an opening for Europe. While AI development in China and the United States is driven primarily by the quest for data and analytics that can be used commercially, Europeans are focused more on protecting the privacy of the user. As Lee told us in an interview: “That will cause the American giants some amount of trouble and may give local European entrepreneurs the chance to build something that is more consumer and individual-centric and that would go further than American companies would ever contemplate in protecting privacy.”

Europe’s leaders should seize this opportunity by fostering a continent-wide collaboration to put its distinct stamp on AI. The most promising prospect for Europe would be to blaze a different path than the United States or China. It could put its resources behind the proposal of Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, to “re-decentralize” the Internet, both to assure a fairer allocation of the digital dividend and hand back control of personal data from big tech to individuals.

This culture-bound constraint on data collection, in turn, would reorient the development of AI in a more social instead of consumer-marketing direction, which has been the main focus of both China and Silicon Valley. Europe could further choose to compete where it has an advantage in basic science. Just as Europe joined together to create the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator, European nations could cooperate on a project to be the first to build super-intelligent machines, ones that surpass human capacities.

The potential is there. The Scandinavian countries, of course, have long been engaged in the fray with such innovations as Skype and Spotify. Germany has its own digital modernization strategy, “Industry 4.0,” aimed at upgrading its manufacturing base through machine-learning tools. And though not gaining much traction so far, Chancellor Angela Merkel has highlighted the importance of European Union investment in AI. She has even mused that Europe could present a third way for AI.

France, a core nation of Europe alongside Germany, can make a critical contribution. As the most active modernizer on the European scene today, French President Emmanuel Macron is well positioned to promote Europe’s role as a third pillar of the AI revolution. Like de Gaulle in his time, Macron has an intuitive sense of what it takes to stay in the game — and a bold political imagination to figure out how to do so. From his first days in office, he has focused on invigorating Europe’s entrepreneurial culture and bolstering state support for innovation, especially in AI.

“My goal is to recreate a European sovereignty in AI,” he said. “If you want to manage your own choice of society, your choice of civilization, you have to be able to be an acting part of this AI revolution.” Drawing on his country’s heritage as a cradle of scientific discovery and the Enlightenment, he has recruited the brainy mathematician and AI guru Cédric Villani to lay the foundation for France’s effort.

Macron is on the right track. The AI challenge may be just the summons a continent torn apart by persistent centrifugal forces — financial crisis, immigration and populism — needs to embrace unity more fully. An ambitious historic project aimed at reaping the economic benefits of AI, securing an independent presence for European values in the new world order and leading a scientific breakthrough to superintelligence would provide a binding narrative for a continent adrift. Such a moonshot vision would be far more compelling for Europeans than the tired pitch from Brussels that dourly sells a common Europe as canned spinach, something the paternal authorities say is good for you but that everyone hates.

Belatedly grasping what is at stake, E.U. regulators are now taking rearguard action against American big tech through the General Data Protection Regulation and other means. But if Europe wants to get ahead of the game, to recover the sovereign ability to chart its own course, it needs an innovation ecosystem that makes it the author of its own algorithms while at the same time building on its unique strengths in science.

>https://www.amazon.com/AI-Superpowers-China-Silicon-Valley/dp/132854639X

Thank you for this recommendation!

It is a very valid concern. China is going very hard at AI, while our government seems to only care about the Donald Trump sideshow.

Andrew credits this book with largely shaping his opinions on the coming AI Race:
https://www.amazon.com/AI-Superpowers-China-Silicon-Valley/dp/132854639X

Here is the author speaking on Andrew's campaign:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7gSD-LXT34

See Wikipedia:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai-Fu_Lee

And Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/AI-Superpowers-China-Silicon-Valley/dp/132854639X

The author isn't a socialist, but the subject matter should interest every marxist.

I just read "AI Superpowers" by Kai-Fu Lee and so I'm in the hype zone. That said, humans suck at pattern matching compared to computer algorithms. The tricky part is the data. Yes, they can go in and see an individual property's renovations, lot quirks, etc. but they don't see the same for comparables (all they have is what they have seen before which introduces observation bias). Over time as more data become available, algorithms will overtake humans.

>To the extent that Huawei copies other parties' IP, it is unlikely to suffer consequences in China because it does not subscribe to international IP norms.

Yes but the Chinese market is so big they don't care and it is only growing. The US market is also huge but we already are disinclined to purchase Huawei products, yet they are still top 3 in phone sales globally.

​

You asked how copyright laws handicap innovation? I'm speaking on the overall technological innovation of a society, currently the US' overall technological innovation is being hindered, in part, by copyright laws such as the DMCA and DRM.

​

In the book, AI Superpowers, the author, Kai-Fu Lee, argues much the same, but in the specific lens of Artificial Intelligence. He goes in to explicit detail about many examples, much better than I could explain them. There you will specifically find the examples you demand, then you can go and tell him he has no idea what he is talking about.

​

Edit:

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-lawsuit-takes-dmca-section-1201-research-and-technology-restrictions-violate

https://www.eff.org/cases/green-v-us-department-justice

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-wins-dmca-exemption-petitions-tinkering-echos-and-repairing-appliances-new

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/08/topple-track-attacks-eff-and-others-outrageous-dmca-notices

https://cdt.org/insight/the-cyber-hard-questions-in-the-world-of-cybersecurity-research/

https://cdt.org/blog/taking-the-pulse-of-security-research/

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/12/closed-proprietary-felonious-toxic-rainbow-locked-technology

https://cdt.org/files/2018/04/2018-04-09-security-research-expert-statement-final.pdf

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/anyone-even-government-can-ask-patent-office-review-invalid-patents

​