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Chen Qiufan, Kai-Fu Lee: AI 2041 (2021, Currency) 3 stars

AI will be the defining development of the twenty-first century. Within two decades, aspects of …

Worth reading, but barely

3 stars

This book rides the line between sci-fi and nonfiction science predictions. The stories are nice, but their main draw comes from the ideas they illustrate about how our world could look in 20 or so years. Each short story is followed by a nonfiction segment explaining what the short story is supposed to illustrate. Those segments are pretty boring as most of what they say can be observed just by reading the short stories and having a little reading comprehension.

The predictions themselves aren't likely to age well. even for their time I think they lack a much-needed political analysis. For technology, they are quite imaginative and consider the interaction between AI and other emerging technologies like AR/VR and 3D printing (fascinating!), but the most they can imagine for emerging politics is UBI and more neoliberalism (boring!).