Kai-Fu Lee > Quotes

“Part of why predicting the ending to our AI [artificial intelligence] story is so difficult is because this isn’t just a story about machines. It’s also a story about human beings, people with free wills that allows them to make their own choices and to shape their own destinies. Our AI future will be created by us, and it will reflect the choices we make and the actions we take.”
― Kai-Fu Lee (author)

“In stark contrast, China’s startup culture is the yin to Silicon Valley’s yang: instead of being mission-driven, Chinese companies are first and foremost market-driven. Their ultimate goal is to make money, and they’re willing to create any product, adopt any model, or go into any business that will accomplish that objective. That mentality leads to incredible flexibility in business models and execution, a perfect distillation of the “lean startup” model often praised in Silicon Valley. It doesn’t matter where an idea came from or who came up with it. All that matters is whether you can execute it to make a financial profit. The core motivation for China’s market-driven entrepreneurs is not fame, glory, or changing the world. Those things are all nice side benefits, but the grand prize is getting rich, and it doesn’t matter how you get there.”
― Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

“In deep learning, there’s no data like more data. The more examples of a given phenomenon a network is exposed to, the more accurately it can pick out patterns and identify things in the real world.”
― Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

“AI ever allows us to truly understand ourselves, it will not be because these algorithms captured the mechanical essence of the human mind. It will be because they liberated us to forget about optimizations and to instead focus on what truly makes us human: loving and being loved.”
― Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

“the invention of deep learning means that we are moving from the age of expertise to the age of data. Training successful deep-learning algorithms requires computing power, technical talent, and lots of data. But of those three, it is the volume of data that will be the most important going forward. That’s because once technical talent reaches a certain threshold, it begins to show diminishing returns. Beyond that point, data makes all the difference. Algorithms tuned by an average engineer can outperform those built by the world’s leading experts if the average engineer has access to far more data.”
― Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

“Imagine, a $1,000 political assassin! And this is not a far-fetched danger for the future, but a clear and present danger.”
― Kai-Fu Lee, AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future

“Cash has disappeared so quickly from Chinese cities that it even “disrupted” crime. In March 2017, a pair of Chinese cousins made headlines with a hapless string of robberies. The pair had traveled to Hangzhou, a wealthy city and home to Alibaba, with the goal of making a couple of lucrative scores and then skipping town. Armed with two knives, the cousins robbed three consecutive convenience stores only to find that the owners had almost no cash to hand over—virtually all their customers were now paying directly with their phones. Their crime spree netted them around $125 each—not even enough to cover their travel to and from Hangzhou—when police picked them up. Local media reported rumors that upon arrest one of the brothers cried out, “How is there no cash left in Hangzhou?”
― Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

“Throw in the valley’s rich history of computer science breakthroughs, and you’ve set the stage for the geeky-hippie hybrid ideology that has long defined Silicon Valley. Central to that ideology is a wide-eyed techno-optimism, a belief that every person and company can truly change the world through innovative thinking. Copying ideas or product features is frowned upon as a betrayal of the zeitgeist and an act that is beneath the moral code of a true entrepreneur. It’s all about “pure” innovation, creating a totally original product that generates what Steve Jobs called a “dent in the universe.” Startups that grow up in this kind of environment tend to be mission-driven. They start with a novel idea or idealistic goal, and they build a company around that. Company mission statements are clean and lofty, detached from earthly concerns or financial motivations.”
― Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

“Of the hundreds of companies pouring resources into AI research, let’s return to the seven that have emerged as the new giants of corporate AI research—Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent.”
― Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

“Algorithms tuned by an average engineer can outperform those built by the world’s leading experts if the average engineer has access to far more data.”
― Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

“birthplace and heritage are not the sole determinants of behavior.”
― Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

“RENEWABLE ENERGY REVOLUTION: SOLAR + WIND + BATTERIES In addition to AI, we are on the cusp of another important technological revolution—renewable energy. Together, solar photovoltaic, wind power, and lithium-ion battery storage technologies will create the capability of replacing most if not all of our energy infrastructure with renewable clean energy. By 2041, much of the developed world and some developing countries will be primarily powered by solar and wind. The cost of solar energy dropped 82 percent from 2010 to 2020, while the cost of wind energy dropped 46 percent. Solar and onshore wind are now the cheapest sources of electricity. In addition, lithium-ion battery storage cost has dropped 87 percent from 2010 to 2020. It will drop further thanks to the massive production of batteries for electrical vehicles. This rapid drop in the price of battery storage will make it possible to store the solar/wind energy from sunny and windy days for future use. Think tank RethinkX estimates that with a $2 trillion investment through 2030, the cost of energy in the United States will drop to 3 cents per kilowatt-hour, less than one-quarter of today’s cost. By 2041, it should be even lower, as the prices of these three components continue to descend. What happens on days when a given area’s battery energy storage is full—will any generated energy left unused be wasted? RethinkX predicts that these circumstances will create a new class of energy called “super power” at essentially zero cost, usually during the sunniest or most windy days. With intelligent scheduling, this “super power” can be used for non-time-sensitive applications such as charging batteries of idle cars, water desalination and treatment, waste recycling, metal refining, carbon removal, blockchain consensus algorithms, AI drug discovery, and manufacturing activities whose costs are energy-driven. Such a system would not only dramatically decrease energy cost, but also power new applications and inventions that were previously too expensive to pursue. As the cost of energy plummets, the cost of water, materials, manufacturing, computation, and anything that has a major energy component will drop, too. The solar + wind + batteries approach to new energy will also be 100-percent clean energy. Switching to this form of energy can eliminate more than 50 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, which is by far the largest culprit of climate change.”
― Kai-Fu Lee, AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future

“Algorithms tuned by an average engineer can outperform those built by the world’s leading experts”
― Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

“Regardless of these theories, I believe it’s indisputable that computers simply “think” differently from our brains.”
― Kai-Fu Lee, AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future

“In the story of AI and humans, if we get the dance between artificial intelligence and human society right, it would unquestionably be the single greatest achievement in human history.”
― Kai-Fu Lee, AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future

“instead of being mission-driven, Chinese companies are first and foremost market-driven. Their ultimate goal is to make money, and they’re willing to create any product, adopt any model, or go into any business that will accomplish that objective.”
― Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

“Over the years, I have learned that if each country could understand the other’s history, culture, and viewpoint, and accept that there are some issues that the two countries will “agree to disagree”, there would be tremendous progress. I have come to really like the wise Chinese proverb “yi zhong qiu tong,” which means seeking common ground while accepting differences. This is precisely the mindset that both countries need.”
― Kai-Fu Lee, My Journey into AI: The Story Behind the Man Who Helped Launch 5 A.I. Companies Worth $25 Billion

“To the AI, such things were a matter of math, not love.”
― Kai-Fu Lee, AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future

“When Sergei Brin and Larry Page founded Google in 1998, just 0.2 percent of the Chinese population was connected to the internet, compared with 30 percent in the United States.”
― Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

“While humans lack AI’s ability to analyze huge numbers of data points at the same time, people have a unique ability to draw on experience, abstract concepts, and common sense to make decisions. By contrast, in order for deep learning to function well, the following are required: massive amounts of relevant data, a narrow domain, and a concrete objective function to optimize. If you’re short on any one of these, things may fall apart.”
― Kai-Fu Lee, AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future

“Can you imagine the elation that comes from beating a world champion at the game you’ve devoted your whole life to mastering? AlphaGo did just that, but it took no pleasure in its success, felt no happiness from winning, and had no desire to hug a loved one after its victory. Despite”
― Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

“Robotics, however, is much more difficult. It requires a delicate interplay of mechanical engineering, perception AI, and fine-motor manipulation. These are all solvable problems, but not at nearly the speed at which pure software is being built to handle white-collar cognitive tasks. Once that robot is built, it must also be tested, sold, shipped, installed, and maintained on-site. Adjustments to the robot’s underlying algorithms can sometimes be made remotely, but any mechanical hiccups require hands-on work with the machine. All these frictions will slow down the pace of robotic automation.”
― Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

“AI will do the analytical thinking, while humans will wrap that analysis in warmth and compassion.”
― Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

“China lagged years, if not decades, behind the United States in artificial intelligence. But over the past three years China has caught AI fever, experiencing a surge of excitement about the field that dwarfs even what we see in the rest of the world. Enthusiasm about AI has spilled over from the technology and business communities into government policymaking, and it has trickled all the way down to kindergarten classrooms in Beijing.”
― Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

“Realizing the newfound promise of electrification a century ago required four key inputs: fossil fuels to generate it, entrepreneurs to build new businesses around it, electrical engineers to manipulate it, and a supportive government to develop the underlying public infrastructure. Harnessing the power of AI today—the “electricity” of the twenty-first century—requires four analogous inputs: abundant data, hungry entrepreneurs, AI scientists, and an AI-friendly policy environment.”
― Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

“IT IS BETTER TO LIVE YOUR OWN DESTINY IMPERFECTLY THAN TO IMITATE SOMEBODY ELSE’S PERFECTLY.”
― Kai-Fu Lee, AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future

“To put it in technical terms, the core of the issue is the simplicity of the objective function, and the danger from single-mindedly optimizing a single objective function, which can lead to harmful externalities.”
― Kai-Fu Lee, AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future

“the greatest value of science fiction is not providing answers, but rather raising questions.”
― Kai-Fu Lee, AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future

“Deepfakes are built on a technology called generative adversarial networks (GAN). As the name suggests, a GAN is a pair of “adversarial” deep learning neural networks. The first network, the forger network, tries to generate something that looks real, let’s say a synthesized picture of a dog, based on millions of pictures of dogs. The other network, the detective network, compares the forger’s synthesized dog picture with genuine dog pictures, and determines if the forger’s output is real or fake.”
― Kai-Fu Lee, AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future

“PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates AI deployment will add $15.7 trillion to global GDP by 2030. China is predicted to take home $7 trillion of that total, nearly double North America’s $3.7 trillion in gains. As”
― Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order