My intro thoughts about Artificial Intelligence and my personal highlights from this book AI Superpowers, China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

Prior to having a shortest stint in SITA (Société Internationale de Télécommunications Aéronautiques), the world’s leading specialist in air transport communications and information technology, I worked for a few months as a communications specialist in a U.S. tech counterpart where we directly deal with hospitals based in Texas. On the side, I was already hustling with my passion in professional sound and lights rental business. It is where and how I eventually exercised my marketing skills. After those short-lived career in telecom, I worked as an assistant manager of the MIS department of an international trading company run by an American Jew. It is where I met my co-worker and superior. He was older and a working student in Computer Science. While I would share to him my interests in sound and lights, dance music, alternative bands, concerts and events, he was silver-tounged with films and Hollywood celebrities. Since he was a working student, he would do programming in the office which later I realized why he needed an assistant. One of his favorite CS subjects is artificial intelligence. Coming from mostly hardware engineering and computer systems design orientation, I first thought that artificial intelligence was either a balance of software and hardware or relying mostly on the hardware with a proprietary programmed language. My software engineering background is literally soft. It was only an elective subject in electronics and communications engineering course during my time. Often times my co-worker and I were talking about the AI as his university subject. I perceived it as about talking robots and was literally imagining the ugly and classic black-and-white films where robots are commanded by their human master. 

So why am I sharing this story? Because many times when I read, hear, and watch anything about AI, I remember the guy. He was the first person I had a conversation with about AI until I resigned from the company to pursue into selling electronic gadgets with my college friends and continued doing off-shoot gigs in the audio and lights business. The AI topic suddenly was eclipsed with sales and marketing jargons. Eventually, my interest in audio and lights had gone broad into a career and became a major responsibility. So I decided to go into it full time. I also ventured into producing concerts and events with people who resigned from the advertising and media industries to pursue the ever risky entrepreneurial journey. On the other hand, my co-worker shifted to pursuing his writing career in the TV and film industries. He left his promising career in computer science. Thus, the conversations about AI had rested, till forgotten.

Since then, I never had any formal chance to talk to anyone who is interested in the AI topic. Probably because there was no supporting network in where we live. I haven’t met anyone in my circle who is interested to talk about it even if I was hopping in and off between my tech friends and colleagues in the events industry. Neither there were news from the government nor in the mainstream. In the early 2010s, my interest in artificial intelligence awakens, but still not much until I personally experienced the real thing mostly in Silicon Valley where I frequently visit. The exposure of the tech news about the augmented reality, virtual reality, and autonomous vehicles is driven by social media, and artificial intelligence is a core of each of those. Black Mirror on Netflix was also much talked about especially on Twitter. The discussions in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential debates about how the AI will affect the businesses, employment, and the everyday life sent as an awareness. With his passion and goal in his platform, Andrew Yang delivers and explains to the mainstream and social media what the consequences of artificial intelligence will be in the immediate future—both positive and negative. Lastly, my amazing experience in Consumer Electronics Show or CES 2020 in Las Vegas is unforgettable. On my Twitter post I said I was in an event or exhibit hall where fifty percent are humans and fifty percent are robots. From the family of robots assembled in China to the most sophisticated preview of military robots and pets from Boston Dynamics to the talking home appliances and ecosystem of Samsung, the artificial intelligence is both blatant and exciting.

Last year, Philippines had the longest lockdown. The enhanced community quarantine during the pandemic makes us tuned-in more to our mobile devices, laptops, and TVs. In my YouTube viewing algorithm, I was able to watch how China is researching, developing and preparing for the AI age. In fact, they are already implementing the social credit system where they track their people and assess their level of trust. It comes with rewards and punishments. In one of the scenes, Kai-Fu Lee is being interviewed by the media and young people who bought his book are asking for his autograph. Honestly, I did not know about him until I researched about his book first. I bought the book because I wanted to see the other side of the story—the East side of the story. As I started reading it, I became more interested because it does not only tackle about technology. It is more about the culture. I strongly believe that research, development and implementation of any technology is influenced by a culture. The adaptability and its wisdom to lead to change depends on where you live, and when your government will believe. This is exactly what I want to know and to learn. Some countries are already preparing for the coming of the AI age. AI superpowers take advantage of the venture capital ecosystem and the generation of data from large user bases. Some countries are silent and not putting it as a priority, or perhaps not aware of the immediate importance of it. 

In the critical end, the unprepared countries will surely make an alliance with any of the two AI Superpowers because it will determine the future of these countries’ military and workforce. What you will look back after 10, 20, 30, or 40 years.

Meanwhile, let me share to you my personal highlights and limited excerpts from this book. I recommend that you read the book if we have the same interest in AI or if we have the same enthusiasm in understanding the cultural shift, technology, and the future. It took me 546 minutes to read, highlight, and write on pages of the book— AI Superpowers, China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order. I will separately share my insights about this on my next post. Hopefully before the next book of Lee is released.

• China lives in a world of where speed is essential, “copying” is an accepted practice, and competitors will stop at nothing to win a new market.
• Several other countries have a strong AI research labs staffed with great talent, but they lack the venture capital ecosystem and large user bases to generate data that will be the key to the age of AI implementation.
• Silicon Valley startup culture is “Mission-Driven”. China startup culture is “Market-Driven”
• Silicon Valley startups start with a novel idea or idealistic goal. Mission statements are clean and lofty, detached from earthly concerns or financial motivations. China startups goal is to make money that it doesn’t matter where an idea came from or who came up with it. All that matters is whether you can execute it to make a financial profit.
• China’s core motivation is getting rich and it doesn’t matter how you get there.
• In China, parents don’t talk to their children about changing the world. They talk about survival, about a responsibility to earn money so they can take care of their parents when their parents are too old to work.
• China needed to “let some people get rich first” in order to develop.
• The most valuable product to come out of China’s copycat era wasn’t a product at all: it was the entrepreneurs themselves.
• When Bill Gates founded Microsoft in 1975, China was still in the throes of the Cultural Revolution, a time of massive social upheaval and anti-intellectual fever. Checking my math, a third world country with anti-intellectualism syndrome is lagging at least 45 years behind China today.
• China is turning into the Saudi Arabia of data.
• China’s slogan for its startup space and tech industry — “mass entrepreneurship and mass innovation”.
• There is a direct financial and space support to the innovators and tech entrepreneurs, and a cultural shift that led to the creation of tech incubation zones with preferential tax policies and streamlining of government permits for starting a business.
• China rolled out their own versions of the Avenue of Entrepreneurs. They used “tax discounts” and “rent rebates” to attract startups.
• The cashless payment system “disrupted” crime.
• There are four waves of AI Revolution: internet AI, business AI, perception AI, and autonomous AI
• In business AI, the U.S. leads today by 90-10. China in five years will be close at 70-30.
• Silicon Valley may be the world champion of software innovation, but Shenzhen wears that crown for hardware.
• Today, the greatest advantage of manufacturing in China isn’t the cheap labor — countries like Indonesia and Vietnam offer lower wages. Instead, it is the unparalleled flexibility of the supply chains and the armies of skilled industrial engineers who can make prototypes of new devices and build them at scale.
• Techno-utilitarian approach— ex. Tesla.
• AI will deprive the poor countries of the opportunity to kick start economic growth through low-cost exports, the one proven route that has lifted countries like South Korea, China, and Singapore out of poverty.
• In the AI Age, the younger population will turn into a net liability and a potentially destabilizing one. It may or will be perversely to what it is currently being preached.
• With no way to begin the development process, poor countries will stagnate while the AI superpowers take off.
• Small business will be forced to close doors. The industry juggernauts of the AI age will see profits soar to previously unimaginable levels. In the recent release of Forbes world’s richest, more billionaires have been added in the list and more tech companies make profit. Eight out of 10 of the world’s richest people come from technology and technology-driven companies. I perceive it to be the preview of what will happen in the AI Age.
• In the AI Age, the future struggle will be psychological. As machines will replace humans, theological and political sectors may prepare today and anticipate the question of tomorrow—which is, “what does it mean to be human?”
• China turned into an innovation powerhouse from a predominantly agricultural society because its government’s emphasis on technological advances as key to the country’s economic development.
• AI race has only one winner: China’s gain is America’s loss, and vice-versa
• Global Wisdom For The AI Age. Adapt and reform. Look at how South Korea identifies the potential of the country’s top technical minds a part of their education system program. Consider the approach of how Switzerland and Japan culture of craftsmanship works. Watch the cultures of volunteering of Canada and the Netherland. Learn from the Chinese culture on caring the elders and in fostering intergenerational households.
• The governments will need to consistently look to one another in evaluating thorny new tradeoffs in data privacy, digital monopolies, online security, and algorithmic bias. Ex. the approach of Europe in fining Google for antitrust and trying to wrest control over data away from the technology companies