"In a groundbreaking blend of science and imagination, the former president of Google China and a leading writer of speculative fiction join forces to answer an urgent question: How will artificial intelligence change our world over the next twenty years? AI will be the defining issue of the twenty-first century, but many people know little about it apart from visions of dystopian robots or flying cars. Though the term has been around for half a century, it is only now, Kai-Fu Lee argues, that AI is poised to upend our society, just as the arrival of technologies like electricity and smart phones did before it. In the past five years, AI has shown it can learn games like chess in mere hours-and beat humans every time. AI has surpassed humans in speech and object recognition, even outperforming radiologists in diagnosing lung cancer. AI is at a tipping point. What comes next? Within two decades, aspects of daily life may be unrecognizable. Humankind needs to wake up to AI, both its pathways and perils. In this provocative work that juxtaposes speculative storytelling and science, Lee, one of the world's leading AI experts, has teamed up with celebrated novelist Chen Qiufan to reveal how AI will trickle down into every aspect of our world by 2041. In ten gripping short stories that crisscross the globe, coupled with incisive analysis, Lee and Chen explore AI's challenges and its potential"-- Provided by publisher.

"The stories in this book are a work of fiction"-- title page verso. Includes index.

Introduction by Kai-Fu-Lee: The real story of AI -- Introduction by Chen Qiufan: How we can learn to stop worrying and embrace the future with imagination -- The golden elephant; Analysis: Deep learning, big data, internet/finance applications, AI externalities -- Gods behind the masks; Analysis: Computer vision, convolutional neural networks, deepfakes, generative adversarial networks (GANs), biometrics, AI security -- Twin sparrows; Analysis: natural language processing, self-supervised training, GPT-3, AGI and consciousness, AI education -- Contactless love; Analysis: AI healthcare, alphafold, robotic applications, Covid automation acceleration -- My haunting idol; Analysis: virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR), brain-computer interface (BCI), ethical and societal issues -- The holy driver; Analysis: Autonomous vehicles, full autonomy and smart cities, ethical and social issues -- Quantum genocide; Analysis: Quantum computers, Bitcoin security, autonomous weapons and existential threat -- The job savior; Analysis: AI job displacement, universal basic income (UBI), what AI cannot do, 3Rs as a solution to displacement -- Isle of happiness; Analysis: AI and happiness, general data protection regulation (GDPR), personal data, privacy computing using federated learning and trusted execution environment (TEE) -- Dreaming of plenitude; Analysis: Plenitude, new economic models, the future of money, singularity.