Visions of 2041

I'd been wanting to read "AI 2041: Ten visions for our future" by Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan for a while now. I'd already read his "AI Superpowers" and was really impressed with this man's vision.

Lee wrote the book in 2021 but had to revise it in 2023 because of ChatGPT's launch.

This book is a pleasant surprise (and my expectations were already high). Lee says that when he started studying artificial intelligence (he defended his PhD thesis on this topic 40 years ago), people barely talked about it. The Chinese man, who consults for giants like Apple, Microsoft and Google, is one of the world's leading authorities on the subject.

In this work, he imagines what the next 20 years will look like (remember the original version is from 2021), based on his studies, experience and many interviews he conducted around the world.

The title, 2041, is also a play on words; with well-chosen typography, the A looks very similar to 4, so 41 looks very similar to AI. I thought it was pretty clever.

And you know what's most interesting? When I picked up my English edition, with 442 pages and tiny letters (seriously, it's uncomfortable; must be size 8 or 9 pt), I thought: damn, I'm gonna have to read this brick full of technical data! My eyes got tired just imagining it. But I went for it anyway. And look!

Lee invited his Google colleague Chen Qiufan, an acclaimed science fiction writer (I haven't read anything by him yet; the name's already on the list) to help with the task, and the solution is nothing short of genius: instead of graphs, statistics and predictions, Lee gave the guidelines and Chen created stories set in 2041 for each of the work areas (the 10 visions in the title).

So each chapter brings a fiction story and an analysis of the technologies explored in the scenario. Despite being more optimistic about the results, the discussion is well-balanced and also presents the risks in a very realistic way.

Here's a summary of each vision:

1. THE GOLDEN ELEPHANT

This is the story of an Indian girl living with her middle-class family. The parents are excited because they managed to get life insurance that's a social game; everything each family member does (food, friendships, behavior, etc.) counts toward calculating life expectancy and consequently increases or decreases the value.

The algorithm controls everyone's life and even her younger brother starts eating healthier and exercising so as not to hurt the family finances. The girl falls in love with a school classmate (a scholarship student) who's from a lower caste — in this case, the algorithm does everything to keep them apart, because the data has biases that associate the boy's origins with crime-related problems.

ANALYSIS

Here the author analyzes deep learning, big data, finance and externalities. He talks about algorithm bias, privacy, opportunities in finance and AI's influence on people's private lives.

2. GODS BEHIND THE MASKS

This story takes place in Nigeria and a boy comes from the countryside to the capital, Lagos, looking for better opportunities. The scenario is futuristic, but not too much.

Transportation fares, for example, are charged with facial recognition at the beginning and end of the trip (then the system calculates the value and debits from the account). Since the guy is poor, he uses a mask to fool the sensors.

The teenager is very good at video editing and has already done several satire works using deep fake (when you replace one person's face with another's in a video), until he's hired by a mysterious organization to generate a fake video of an influencer artist who has already died.

He really needs the money and isn't sure if he's doing the right thing. But in the end, he finds a creative solution to get out of the dilemma.

ANALYSIS

The story's theme is computer vision, convolutional neural networks, deepfakes, generative adversarial networks (GANs), biometrics, security and all their possibilities and consequences. Here it's also very clear that it's possible to fool deep fake checkers if you have very robust computational power (read: money), which brings even more vulnerability to poor and unequal countries like Nigeria.

3. TWIN SPARROWS

I really liked this story, which takes place in an orphanage in (South) Korea, where two 6-year-old twin brothers live. Their personalities are diametrically opposite: Golden Sparrow is extroverted, extremely competitive and bold. Silver Sparrow is autistic, introspective and has difficulty socializing.

They're educated with the help of a personal artificial intelligence, designed for each one's needs, which chooses its form and name. The shelter's teachers are actually mentors, counselors and are responsible for providing the most important guidelines for the boys' education; they're the ones who guide the machines.

Each one is adopted by a different family and they continue to live their lives separately with their personal assistants. Until a teacher decides to put the data in communication without them noticing so they can resolve their internal conflicts and traumas. The story is beautiful.

ANALYSIS

The author shows the potential of using natural language in generative artificial intelligences, self-supervised training, GPT-3, the consciousness issue and, mainly, the important role of these technologies in customized education for each student profile.

4. CONTACTLESS LOVE

This story is really cool and takes place in Shanghai, China. Chen Nan lost her parents in the Covid pandemic and was very traumatized. Now, in 2041, she lives alone and works remotely — she avoids leaving home as much as possible. Not even the innovations (vaccines, risk level markers embedded in the skin, health history) that could perhaps protect her, she manages to adopt for the simple fact that, to do so, she needs to leave home.

Technology allows her to live well like this: she exercises, eats, shops, cleans the house, all with the help of robots and immersion systems.

Che Nan has a Brazilian boyfriend named Garcia. They met in a virtual game and adore each other. The only thing preventing them from being together is Che Nan's terror of physically approaching anyone. So whenever Garcia talks about visiting her, she changes the subject.

Until one day she gets a call from a doctor saying her boyfriend arrived in Shanghai and was contaminated during the flight. He's dying and wants to say goodbye. Che Nan goes crazy and gets the courage to leave home to meet him at the hospital, thus going through a series of risks, including because she's irregular in several aspects (vaccine, risk control, etc.).

The ending is surprising and it's a shame this is the only time Brazil appears in the book (at least the character is cool).

ANALYSIS

Here the author explores all the possibilities of healthcare, prevention and tools to face pandemics, robotic applications, Covid, citizen control and games.

5. MY HAUNTED IDOL

Aiko lives in Tokyo and is a fan of a singer called Hiroshi X, who died 20 years ago. She's very grateful to him, because when she was a teenager she had deep depression and managed to get out of the hole listening to one of his songs. She remembers exactly the farewell show, when he, even very young, chose to retire and mysteriously appeared dead behind the stage.

After all these years, the girl is invited to participate in a game where the objective is to discover her idol's killer.

The heartthrob appears in holographic form in unusual situations and gives clues to discover what really happened. She investigates, selecting clues, interviewing people, until discovering the whole truth and winning the big prize.

ANALYSIS

After the story, Kai-Fu analyzes the power and applications of virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality (which combines the previous two). He also talks about the potential and risks of brain-computer interface, in addition to drawing attention to the ethical and social problems of using these technologies.

6. THE HOLY DRIVER

Chamal is about to turn 13, but he's already a respected gamer in Sri Lanka. His passion is cars! His uncle Junius, who used to be a driver, invites him to participate in a test at a Chinese autonomous car company. Robots, unlike humans, take a long time to learn and need zillions of data and experiences to make decisions. With chaotic traffic in Sri Lanka, the idea is to use talented gamers like Chamal to train artificial intelligence.

The boy loves the totally immersive experience of driving, initially in an environment that simulates his neighborhood; then the rest of the city, other countries. The more obstacles and problems he manages to overcome, the more money he earns (and his family is in real need).

One day, under the weight of this responsibility, the test is to remove cars and save people on an artificial island in Singapore that's being invaded by a tsunami. His performance is so good that the boy is invited to go to China to visit the factory headquarters.

It's there that he discovers he's not in a game: he's piloting real cars remotely, in real risk situations for people, where artificial intelligence has no way to make complex decisions. The guy gets scared by the responsibility and asks to quit the job, but not before saving several people's lives in a terrorist attack.

ANALYSIS

Here the author talks about the complexity, levels and limitations of autonomous vehicles, the still distant horizon of total autonomy and its reasons. He also talks about smart cities, as well as ethical and social issues.

7. QUANTUM GENOCIDE

This is the most complex story in the series (at least so far). Robin is 26 years old and is a hacker "hired" by a giant and powerful company to cover up crimes of various types. She was blackmailed into accepting the job, under penalty of having her entire family killed. Xavier works at the European cybercrime investigation center and his motivation is to rescue his sister, kidnapped and kept as a slave by the company Robin works for.

The two meet when drone attacks happen simultaneously in several places around the world. Xavier suspects a German professor, who lost his family in a fire caused by a climate disaster and can't accept that nobody is moving to stop this.

The guy then comes up with a plan: disconnect the servers, submarine cables and satellites of the entire planet so that humans return to the pre-internet era — the idea is to slow down development and humanity's suicide.

ANALYSIS

Here the author explains the current state of the art of quantum computers, talks about bitcoin security, atomic weapons and existential threats. The most impressive thing is that everything is very believable.

8. JOB SAVER

For me, this was the weakest story; I found it kind of lazy... but here we go!

Jennifer is a trainee at a reemployment company and starts with her on the first day of work watching a video of how the company came about; after the 2021 pandemic, there were many mass layoffs, which only increased with the advancement of generative artificial intelligence. For a while, the government tried to implement universal basic income, but people got lazy and started gambling and drinking.

Seriously? The story takes place in the United States and is written by a Chinese person; two cultures where a person's value is defined by work, as if there were nothing more important to do in life. Before the industrial revolution, didn't people live?

Well, another annoyance was that the girl, who dreams of being the company owner's assistant (people, this plot is very 20th century) gets the position because she takes the initiative to invite him for coffee and tell her story (Hello?). She walks around the city wearing an executive suit and carrying her cell phone (remember the story takes place in 2041!).

Anyway, it tells the drama of people being fired and how difficult it is to find a position that, after a few months or years, will also be extinct and replaced by a machine, until, in the end, the protagonists themselves are victims of their own spell.

A very lazy reinterpretation of the movie "Up in the air" starring George Clooney.

ANALYSIS

The author talks about jobs displaced by AI, about universal basic income (without considering the real results in places where it has already been tested), what AI cannot do and its limitations. He reinforces that only humans are capable of being creative, empathetic and dexterous (manual work where vision is synchronized with the hand in unknown and unstructured environments).

And Kai-Fu argues that the solution is what he calls the 3Rs: Relearn, Recalibrate and Reborn. Anyway, I thought the analysis, very good, doesn't quite match the story.

9. HAPPINESS ISLAND

This time the story takes place in Doha, Qatar, where a Russian millionaire, one of those technology industry icons, arrives answering a mysterious invitation. Someone invites him for a happiness-seeking experience and he, bored with the direction life is taking, accepts.

People, what are the chances of a millionaire accepting an invitation without knowing who it's from? And more: upon arriving at the place, an artificial island, he signs a contract where he makes available all his personal data and assets until the end of the experience. Ok, let's disregard this part...

Well, there are other guests at the place: a digital artist, an actress, a neurobiologist, anyway, several exponents, each in their area. Almost all celebrities, like himself.

Viktor, the man's name, learns that everything on that island is customized for him to achieve happiness. The royal family princess, Akilah, prepared this experiment with her brother, and their goal is to use artificial intelligence to bring happiness to people. The princess, not by chance, studied in London and has a PhD in psychology, specializing in happiness.

The entire project environment changes dynamically according to the mood and vital information that AI collects from Viktor's body. The result is a perfectly comfortable situation for absolutely all his senses: colors, temperature, food, sounds, everything perfect. However, somewhat tedious, as the princess already suspected (she studied this, right?).

Well, in the end there's a script change (at least for Viktor) and the final plan is revealed (the result depended entirely on Viktor's reactions to stimuli, including problems and challenges).

What caught my attention most (and, in my opinion, a big flaw), was that the experiment was totally individual. We know that being happy in isolation, without friends, people you trust and who are happy with you, is kind of difficult, right?

ANALYSIS

In this part the author talks about the relationship between AI and happiness (which is an extremely subjective concept that varies over time and context). He also discusses the General Data Protection Regulation (in 2041 none of the characters seem very worried about this), about personal data and privacy, and about trusted environments, and how these factors can unfold in the coming decades.

10. DREAM OF FULFILLMENT

Keira has roots in Australia's indigenous peoples (I heard the word aboriginal isn't used anymore, however, the author uses it in the book). She's going to work as a caregiver in an elderly shelter to earn social credits (very similar to one of the Black Mirror Netflix series episodes and which was actually implemented in China) — the more good deeds, volunteer work and kind attitudes you do, the more credits you earn, which can be exchanged for services or preference for a job vacancy, for example.

Keira's dream is to work with augmented reality, but in a racist society (yes, in 2041), the chances are much lower.

Keira's job is to take care of Joanna, who, at only 71 years old, is in a wheelchair and starting a process of developing Alzheimer's disease (huh, haven't they found a cure yet?). Joanna is a biologist and developed a process that saved Australia's Great Barrier Reef, however, she's proud and quite difficult to deal with.

The two have conflicts of all kinds, including because Joanna doesn't want to rate Keira's excellent services well, harming her in her plans.

ANALYSIS

Here the issue of inequality still not resolved by racism issues is discussed, biological evaluation systems, new economic models and the future of money.

CONCLUSIONS

I thought the idea of mixing fiction and technical analysis was excellent, as it makes it much more pleasant to dive into these themes, sometimes quite dry.

Despite recognizing some risks of new technologies, the author is quite optimistic and, at times, I'd say he has a somewhat romanticized vision.

I believe this book is essential for anyone interested in the developments we'll have from now on, not only because it manages to give a general overview of the technologies already available, but also presents a very realistic vision of where we can get in the next 20 years.