AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future

Artificial intelligence will be the defining event of the 21st century. Over two decades, all aspects of everyday life will become unrecognizable. AI will bring unprecedented wealth, and the symbiosis of human and machine will bring a revolution in medicine and education—creating entirely new forms of communication and entertainment. However, by freeing us from routine work, AI will also challenge the organizational principles of our economic and social order. AI will introduce new risks in the form of autonomous weapons and ambiguous intellectual technologies. AI is at a turning point, and people need to learn both the positive aspects AI can bring and the existential dangers it may pose.

In this provocative, completely original work, Kai-Fu Lee, former president of Google China and author of the book “AI Superpowers,” teams up with the famous novelist Chen Qiufan to present our world in 2041—and how it will be shaped by AI. In ten gripping stories, they introduce readers to possible new realities of 2041:

In San Francisco, a “job redistribution” industry appears as deep-learning AI triggers mass job displacement;

In Tokyo, a music lover immerses himself in an exciting form of celebrity worship based on virtual and mixed reality;

In Mumbai, a teenage girl rebels when AI’s big-data compression interferes with romance;

In Seoul, virtual companions with perfect natural language processing (NLP) skills offer orphan twins new ways to connect;

In Munich, a con artist scientist uses quantum computing, computer vision, and other AI technologies in a revenge plot that threatens the entire world;

Looking at a not-so-distant horizon, AI 2041 offers urgent insight into our collective future, reminding readers that, ultimately, humankind remains the author of its fate.