AI 2041

New York Times bestselling non-fiction author joins forces with a celebrated science-fiction novelist to blend imaginative storytelling and scientific forecasting to ask how artificial intelligence will change our world over the next 20 years.

In this ground-breaking blend of imaginative storytelling and scientific forecasting, a pioneering AI expert and a leading writer of speculative fiction join forces to answer an imperative question: How will artificial intelligence change our world within twenty years?

AI will be the defining development of the twenty-first century. Within two decades, aspects of daily human life will be unrecognizable. AI will generate unprecedented wealth, revolutionize medicine and education through human-machine symbiosis, and create brand new forms of communication and entertainment. In liberating us from routine work, however, AI will also challenge the organizing principles of our economic and social order. Meanwhile, AI will bring new risks in the form of autonomous weapons and smart technology that inherits human bias. AI is at a tipping point, and people need to wake up-both to AI's radiant pathways and its existential perils for life as we know it.

In this provocative, utterly original work of "scientific fiction," Kai-Fu Lee, the former president of Google China and bestselling author of AI Superpowers, joins forces with celebrated novelist Chen Qiufan to imagine our world in 2041 and how it will be shaped by AI. In ten gripping short stories, set twenty years in the future, they introduce readers to an array of eye-opening 2041 settings:

• In San Francisco, a new industry, "job reallocation," arises to serve displaced workers
• In Tokyo, a music fan is swept up in an immersive form of celebrity worship
• In Mumbai, a teenage girl rebels when AI gets in the way of romance
• In Seoul, virtual teachers offer orphaned twins new ways to learn and connect
• In Munich, a rogue quantum computer scientist's revenge plot imperils the world

By gazing toward a not-so-distant horizon, AI 2041 offers urgent insights into our collective future-while reminding readers that, ultimately, humankind remains the author of its destiny.

About the Authors

Kai-Fu Lee is the CEO of Sinovation Ventures and New York Times bestselling author of AI Superpowers. Lee was formerly the president of Google China and a senior executive at Microsoft, SGI, and Apple. Co-chair of the Artificial Intelligence Council at the World Economic Forum, he has a bachelor's degree from Columbia and a PhD from Carnegie Mellon. Lee's numerous honors include being named to the Time 100 and Wired 25 Icons lists.

Chen Qiufan is an award-winning science fiction writer. He grew up near Guiyu, China, home to the world's largest e-waste recycling centre, an area the UN called an 'environmental calamity' and his experiences there inspired The Waste Tide. He currently lives in Shanghai and Beijing and works as the founder of Thema Mundi Studio.