AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

by Kai-Fu Lee

Harnessing the power of AI today—the “electricity” of the twenty-first century—requires four analogous inputs: abundant data, hungry entrepreneurs, AI scientists, and an AI-friendly policy environment.

The hardest thing about facing death isn’t the experiences you won’t get to have. It’s the ones you can’t have back.

“What does it really mean to ‘maximize impact’?” he began. “When people speak in this way, it’s often nothing but a thin disguise for ego, for vanity.

This constant calculating, this quantification of everything, it eats away at what’s really inside of us and what exists between us. It suffocates the one thing that gives us true life: love.”

there’s nothing greater or more valuable in this world than a simple act of sharing love with others.

For all of AI’s astounding capabilities, the one thing that only humans can provide turns out to also be exactly what is most needed in our lives: love. It’s that moment when we see our newborn babies, the feeling of love at first sight, the warm feeling from friends who listen to us empathetically, or the feeling of self-actualization when we help someone in need. We are far from understanding the human heart, let alone replicating it. But we do know that humans are uniquely able to love and be loved, that humans want to love and be loved, and that loving and being loved are what makes our lives worthwhile.

This is the synthesis on which I believe we must build our shared future: on AI’s ability to think but coupled with human beings’ ability to love.

there remains one thing that only human beings are able to create and share with one another: love.