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

by Kai-Fu Lee

WHAT AI CAN AND CAN’T DO: THE RISK-OF-REPLACEMENT GRAPHS When it comes to job replacement, AI’s biases don’t fit the traditional one-dimensional metric of low-skill versus high-skill labor. Instead, AI creates a mixed bag of winners and losers depending on the particular content of job tasks performed. While AI has far surpassed humans at narrow tasks that can be optimized based on data, it remains stubbornly unable to interact naturally with people or imitate the dexterity of our fingers and limbs. It also cannot engage in cross-domain thinking on creative tasks or ones requiring complex strategy, jobs whose inputs and outcomes aren’t easily quantified. What this means for job replacement can be expressed simply through two X–Y graphs, one for physical labor and one for cognitive labor. Risk of Replacement: Cognitive Labor Risk of Replacement: Physical Labor For physical labor, the X-axis extends from “low dexterity and structured environment” on the left side, to “high dexterity and unstructured environment” on the right side. The Y-axis moves from “asocial” at the bottom to “highly social” at the top. The cognitive labor chart shares the same Y-axis (asocial to highly social) but uses a different X-axis: “optimization-based” on the left, to “creativity- or strategy-based” on the right. Cognitive tasks are categorized as “optimization-based” if their core tasks involve maximizing quantifiable variables that can be captured in data (for example, setting an optimal i...