A little background of this book — written in 2018 by Kai-Fu Lee, one of the most respected AI expert. He was an executive at Microsoft, a president at Google China and now is a chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures.
The book covers many aspects about AI from What is AI (thankfully in layman term), how does it evolve and how does it affect human life. But, what make it standout is how the writer point out that 2 countries, USA and China will have a biggest impact on how will AI take it course.
The book is very insightful I recommend it to anyone. There are many key takeaways that I really like and want to share.
The Age of Data
In the past, great AI expert is very crucial and one of the main key determinant to the success of AI research and implementation.
Deep learning is a machine approach that don’t require advanced expertises and let algorithm works on its own. Well… it still needs relevant knowledge and competence to build a competitive application.
Deep learning can perform better and without the need of AI expert, thanks to the ever-growing computing power and data. For the first time that only a strong AI engineer with access to big data and computing power can win AI expert in the race of AI.
First few hidden layers in neural networks act as a feature extraction by itself. This help relieve feature engineering work to some degree. That said, it does not mean feature engineering is not required in Deep learning.
Universal Basic Income (UBI)
UBI is explained as one of solutions to help displaced workers. The idea is that AI elites will get taxed heavily (but not too heavy to discourage incentive) for using AI to reaping profit. The tax will then be distributed to everyone and it have to be enough to meet standard of living (including leisure trip and shopping).
Most of us in the future will have our job taken over by AI. Job is what we cherish and describe who we are. You hears people introduces themself as what they do for a living — I am an engineer. She is a doctor.
When our job is taken over by AI, then who will we be. To tackle this problem, the writer Without job, it means no income. UBI will solve this and hopefully we can find a new purpose.
There is a caveat though…
In the book on how UBI works, it is assumed that tax paid by AI elites will be distributed to everyone including displaced workers or those whose jobs are replaced by AI. In the book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Yuval, the writer, point that it is very unlikely.
Ideally, business that leverage on AI will redistribute profit globally to those who are affected by AI disruption.
Imagine a US based textile company, installation of AI robot will replace grunt workers in south Asia, says Kazakhstan. Do you expect that the US government will let tax collected to be redistributed outside its own country?
UBI will fails when it crosses border.