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As AI companies in the United States and China accumulate more data and talent, the virtuous cycle of data-driven improvements is widening their lead to a point where it will become insurmountable. China and the United States are currently incubating the AI giants that will dominate global markets and extract wealth from consumers around the globe.
It’s a constellation of price, diversity, and capability that has created the world’s largest network of intelligent home devices: 85 million by the end of 2017, far ahead of any comparable U.S. networks. It’s also an ecosystem built on the Made-in-Shenzhen advantage.
While AI-rich countries rake in astounding profits, countries that haven’t crossed a certain technological and economic threshold will find themselves slipping backward and falling farther behind.
AI’s natural affinity for monopolies will bring winner-take-all economics to dozens more industries, and the technology’s skill biases will generate a bifurcated job market that squeezes out the middle class.
Most of all, I’ve stopped viewing my life as an algorithm that optimizes for influence. Instead, I try to spend my energy doing the one thing I’ve found that truly brings meaning to a person’s life: sharing love with those around us.
The real tragedy wasn’t that I might not live much longer. It was
that I had lived so long without generously sharing love with those so close to me.
It’s because I know that my tombstone is just a piece of stone, a lifeless rock that can’t compare with the people and
memories that make up the rich tapestry of a human life.
We don’t need to spend our lives busily accumulating wealth just so that we can die and pass it on to our children—the latest “iteration” of the human algorithm—who will refine and repeat that process.
If AI ever allows us to truly understand ourselves, it will not be because these algorithms captured the mechanical essence of the human mind. It will be because they liberated us to forget about optimizations and to instead focus on what truly makes us human: loving and being loved.
