AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order
by Kai-Fu Lee. He developed an advanced continuous speech recognition system during his Ph.D. work at Carnegie Mellon University in the early 1980s. He landed at Apple in 1990 for a decade, then went to SGI.
Since 2000 Kai-Fu served as the founding director of Microsoft Research Asia, then president of Google China, He departed to launch Sinovation Ventures, a venture capital firm in Beijing.
This book weaves in and out of AI technology developments. It is both surprising and disappointing. Many have certainly noted this is more or less propaganda for China. By the fourth chapter, I began wondering if Kai-Fu is considering a run for Chinese President.
Kai-Fu addresses in chapter 5, the four waves of AI: Internet AI, Business AI, Perception AI, and Autonomous AI. Elements of each wave appear even today, a bit far fetched for a democracy. However within a state controlled economy, China can force changes described across all four. With the US Population at 331 million compared to China’s 1.4 million, statements that China produces more data for AI system is certainly not a watershed thought. Certainly China will produce more data for AI systems than many country populations combined.
The AI shopping cart?
The idea of an AI enhanced shopping cart with a built-in LCD display and recognizes your shopping history upon touch, as you enter any Chinese local Yonghui superstore referenced in “Where every shopping cart knows your name” seems to still be a foreign concept across America’s grocery stores. Too many privacy concerns for the West. In addition, this was published prior to COVID. Today this idea certainly will be replaced by AI-enhanced mobile apps, or Internet AI as Kai-Fu is referencing above.
One App to rule them all
China permits just one app, Tencent‘s WeChat to be a swiss army knife across their mobile app marketplace. WeChat is the equivalent of Facebook, Twitter, TurboTax, WhatsApp, Youtube, Uber, GrubHub, Airbnb (and more) including financial services to permit mobile eCommerce across each services.
In addition, China also has more than 5,000 companies copying Groupon. Think about that scale. I do not see this merger possible in America. Yet with China’s state control, this is not only possible, but rather an obvious choice.
China’s piracy problem lingers
The one issue Kai-Fu does not address is the continuing issue of piracy within China and the country’s consistent and dedicated efforts to hack western companies to steal trade secrets. While dedicating Chapter 2: Copycats in the Coliseum to the overwhelming role of piracy across China, Kai-Fu is signaling this era ended. Not so fast….
Facebook was storming college campuses with its clean design and niche targeting of students. Wang adopted both when he created Xiaonei (“On Campus”). The network was exclusive to Chinese college students, and the user interface was an exact copy of Mark Zuckerberg’s site. Wang meticulously recreated the home page, profiles, tool bars, and color schemes of the Palo Alto startup.
pg. 68
There are serious implications regarding how a communist state supports and encourages piracy, actually the theft of intellectual property to bring China in to the modern world. We need not look any further than the continued digital theft of military technology secrets from the West, especially American technology. Can you imagine the continued theft of American auto manufactures in China?
In comparison, can you imagine Facebook convincing the US Army to arrest Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai over a software update to Google Chat? Actually this did occur between two Chinese tech rivals outlined in “All is fair in startups and war” within Chapter Two. Let that sink in a bit.
Apple tenure
Kai-Fu was leading the PlainTalk natural language technology at Apple while I was a System Engineer, and delivered technology briefings that Kai-Fu was directing for the Macintosh. Ultimately the lack of today’s advanced processors taxed the AI technology. Nevertheless, PlainTalk did have the ability to eliminate noise (knocking on a desk with your fist, or coughing while speaking) with amazing results. This technology was just a bit ahead of it’s time.
It did not surprise me that Kai-Fu admitted to rushing the caesarean delivery of his daughter so he could attend a meeting with then Apple CEO John Sculley regarding PlainTalk:
Our attending doctor told me it was going to be a complex labor because the baby was in the sunny-side up position, with her head facing toward the belly instead of toward the back. That meant Shen-Ling might require a cesarean section. I paced the room anxiously, even more on edge than most expectant fathers on the big day. I was worried about Shen-Ling and the baby’s health, but my mind wasn’t entirely in that delivery room.
That’s because this was the day I was scheduled to deliver a presentation to John Sculley, my CEO at Apple and one of the most powerful men in the technology world. A year earlier, I had joined Apple as the chief scientist for speech recognition, and this presentation was my chance to win Sculley’s endorsement for our proposal to include speech synthesis in every Macintosh computer and speech recognition in all new types of Macs.
pgs. 435-436.
My family will certainly attest Kai-Fu’s story about the demands of working at Apple. Many mixed emotions as I recall those demands taking time away from my life. It seems so long ago now.
Cancer diagnosis
Actually, somewhat removed from this AI story is Kai-Fu sharing his cancer diagnosis. Thankfully he has survived, drawing him closer to his family. This certainly did alter his life for the better, as the book closes with his compassionate ideas on the future of AI including the distribution of economic gains by AI robots across China’s economy.
In conclusion, Kai-Fu has been a recognized leader in AI development for over 30 years. While this book has been well received and Kai-Fu’s stories prove interesting, I found his constant pro-China messaging a major disservice.