53 pages • 1 hour read
Kai-Fu LeeAI Superpowers
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “The Wisdom of Cancer”
Lee writes that he has always had a “fanatical work ethic,” which has rewarded him with incredible success. It also resulted in a robotic mindset and emotional distance from his loved ones.
He tells the story of trying to choose between attending an important meeting and witnessing his first child’s birth. He was able to do both, but if he was forced to choose between them, he “likely” would have picked the meeting. He describes himself as a human AI who made choices based on calculations. He determined the minimum amount of time he needed to spend with loved ones to keep them from complaining and spent the rest of his time on work.
For most of his life, Lee tried to work “twice as hard” as regular people and expected the same from his employees and colleagues. He extolled the virtues of single-minded hard work in self-help books and speeches at college campus. He ended these speeches by instructing his audience to imagine their epitaphs. His own hypothetical tombstone described him as a scientist and business executive whose work “benefited everyone.” Later, it reflected his desire to be seen as a teacher.
In 2013, Lee was diagnosed with lymphoma (cancer of the lymph nodes). Although his doctor told him to seek confirmation from a radiologist, Lee begged for his doctor’s opinion. The doctor guessed that his lymphoma was stage IV. Lee went home to write his will.
Under Taiwanese law, a will is only valid when it is handwritten in traditional Chinese with no mistakes. Lee hadn’t practiced writing traditional Chinese since his youth; he was also shaking and crying. His will took several attempts and hours to write.
At age 11, Lee was sent to live with his older brother in the US for better academic opportunities. His mother went with him for the first six months to help him adjust but as she was “[p]reparing to return home to Taiwan, she asked only that I continue to write her those letters in Chinese each week, a way to keep me close to her heart and rooted in the culture of my ancestors” (199). Lee wrote these letters until his career began because he didn’t have time for them.
Lee cites palliative care worker Bronnie Ware’s writing on terminally ill patients and the regrets they express on their deathbeds. While some wish they had worked less, no one ever wished they had worked more. This encapsulates how Lee felt when confronting his mortality.
Lee visited Master Hsing Yun at the Fo Guang Shan Buddhist monastery for guidance. Hsing Yun asked him what his life’s goal was, and Lee responded: “to maximize my impact and change the world” (201). Hsing Yun replied that this is the product of ego and vanity; he explained that humans should focus on humility and love. Lee agreed. This experience made him feel reborn.
Lee did independent research on lymphoma and stages of cancer. He learned that cancer stages are imprecise estimates. Lee sought a second opinion from a new doctor, who confirmed that his cancer’s survivability rate is 89%. At the time of writing, his cancer is in remission. Lee concludes the chapter by emphasizing the power and importance of love.
Chapter 8 Summary: “A Blueprint for Human Coexistence with AI”
This chapter opens with a story about one of Lee’s friends: a “serial entrepreneur” who has founded several startups. He approaches Lee with a product designed to help elderly people with daily tasks. The machine was a large, simple machine that automated and simplified a number of tasks. During trial deployment of this product, customer service representatives complained that the devices’ users called too often, not because the product wasn’t working, but because they wanted someone to talk to. To Lee, this demonstrates a human need for connection that can only be fulfilled by other people. He believes that the capacity for love and compassion is a “uniquely human” power that machines can’t reproduce.
Lee suggests that, as our economic landscape evolves to center AI, we need to willfully shift toward a culture “that values human love, service, and compassion more than ever before” (213). Although these changes can’t be employed by “brute force,” Lee argues that, through a series of Skinnerian rewards and nudges, governing bodies can reward “desired behaviors” to the point that they reshape culture.
Lee explores three popular policy suggestions for adapting to an AI-driven economy: retraining displaced workers, dividing existing jobs among multiple people, and providing universal basic income (UBI). Lee believes that each of these approaches offers some value. He considers retraining to be a long-term solution and job-sharing to be a short-term bandage. He regards UBI as the product of Silicon Valley elitism:
Silicon Valley entrepreneurs know that their billions in riches and their role in instigating these disruptions make them an obvious target of mob anger if things ever spin out of control. With that fear fresh in their minds, I wonder if this group has begun casting about for a quick fix to problems ahead (219-220).
Lee believes that using love as a motivator for laborers will be the key to creating jobs and finding meaningful work in the AI age.
Lee speculates on the way professions altered by AI might evolve. For example: if (or, according to Lee, when) AI surpasses doctors at data analysis and diagnostics, medical professionals will evolve into “compassionate caregivers” who provide their patients with emotional support. Lee believes that caregiving roles will be our economic and cultural salvation; vocations and long-term tasks like caring for a disabled family member or raising a family must be turned into “true careers with respectable pay and greater dignity” (225).
Lee foresees that VCs will fill a philanthropic niche, funding a “humanistic service-sector” that pays volunteers for doing civic work. He proposes the delivery of social investment stipends paid to volunteers working under “three broad categories: care work, community service, and education” (231). He acknowledges that this proposal raises a number of practical questions with “no clear-cut answers.” Despite that, he still regards this speculative system as both aspirational and attainable. He concludes this chapter by citing his cancer diagnosis as the catalyst for his care work-centered recommendations.
Chapter 9 Summary: “Our Global AI Story”
Lee attended a commencement speech by Steve Jobs in June 2005. In it, Jobs describes the extreme highs and lows of his career.
Speaking to a crowd of ambitious Stanford students, many of whom were eagerly plotting their own ascent to the peaks of Silicon Valley, Jobs cautioned against trying to chart one’s life and career in advance. ‘You can’t connect the dots looking forward,’ Jobs told the assembled students. ‘You can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future’ (238).
Lee finds the speech extremely moving and resonant. He recalls his confrontation with cancer and how it changed his perspective.
Lee revisits his use of the AI “race” metaphor and his description of world “superpowers” in AI. He cautions against reading these metaphors too literally, clarifying that he only used them “to reflect the technological balance of AI capabilities, not to suggest an all-out struggle for military supremacy” (239). He warns that the world needs to prepare itself for the changes AI will bring. He lists several countries and aspects of their cultures he finds aspirational: China and the US’s economic productivity; South Korea’s “gifted and talented” education system; Switzerland and Japan’s cultures of “craftsmanship”; and Canada and the Netherlands’ “meaningful cultures of volunteering” (240). Lee believes these nations (and others) should look to one another for leadership and inspiration as they create policies that help humans retain a sense of agency.
Lee describes his prior foolishness and hopes he is wiser now. He reiterates the importance of love and compassion in the AI age.
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
Chapter 7 represents a change in focus for AI Superpowers. Rather than exploring the socioeconomic impact of AI directly, “The Wisdom of Cancer” takes the form of a mini memoir in which Lee explains his personal values and the experiences that have informed those values. From the beginning, AI Superpowers has used Lee’s personal experiences as a font of content and evidence; the book’s rhetoric leans heavily on extended metaphor and allusion. These elements have been on display all along, but this is the first time they’ve been explicitly centered.
“The Wisdom of Cancer” is peppered with symbols and motifs that are unique to this chapter. The most obvious is Lee’s characterization of himself as a human AI, constantly running calculations and striving for efficiency, writing:
My social algorithms were good enough that I made a point of remembering anniversaries, giving thoughtful gifts, and spending some time with the people in my family. But I approached these as minimization functions, looking for ways to achieve the desired result while putting in the least amount of time possible” (191).
For most of his life, Lee buried himself in the business and science of AI to the detriment of every other aspect of his life. Believing in The Importance of Hard Work and Competition above all else, he strove to reach the pinnacle of his career. After his cancer diagnosis, he seeks help from the Buddhist teacher Hsing Yun, who points out that his motivations are self-aggrandizing and egocentric. When Lee tells Hsing Yun that his life’s mission is to “maximize [his] impact,” Hsing Yun responds: “What does it really mean to ‘maximize impact’? […] When people speak in this way, it’s often nothing but a thin disguise for ego, for vanity. If you truly look within yourself, can you say for sure that what motivates you is not ego?” (202). Lee’s obsession with AI is also an obsession with himself. He describes this egoism as “a tumor that had always lived inside of me, ever tenacious and always growing” (201), likening it to his cancer. His ego—like his physical health—was a human problem he ignored until it became unavoidable.
Lee’s machinelike efficiency and drive are excellent for his career, but they don’t prepare him for human problems like illness or despair. This is exemplified in the will-writing scene:
That teardrop on the page was going to cost me an hour of hard work. I had tried to dab it away with tissue as it grew heavy on my eyelash, but I was a second too late and it dropped to the paper below, landing squarely atop the Chinese character for ‘Lee.’ As the salty tear mixed with the ink on the page, it formed a tiny black puddle that slowly seeped into the paper. I had to start over (196).
Traditional Chinese writing is linked to Lee’s mother, his culture, and his illness. Writing the will also presents an unexpected practical problem. It is a process that cannot be automated—not because an AI can’t be trained to write, but because Taiwanese law dictates that wills must be written by hand. Lee’s emotional state and his fallible human memory make the process inefficient and unwieldly, but there is no other way to write a legally binding will. The legal requirement of the handwritten will presents itself, paradoxically, as both an obstacle and a gift—at a moment of crisis, it forces him to rely on a physical skill learned in childhood, deepening his connection with his body, his memory, and his cultural heritage.
Ultimately, it is the threat of death and the unconditional support of his family that motivates Lee to change. Though he’d been sick in the past, he pushed himself to work through it:
Even when a surgical procedure forced me to remain lying flat in bed for two weeks, I couldn’t let my work go. I had a metal crane built that suspended a computer monitor above my pillow and connected it with a keyboard and mouse that I could lay across my lap. I was back to answering emails within hours of the surgery (191).
Lee was prepared for bodily malfunctions and setbacks (as he might be when training an AI). The threat of imminent death punctures his self-image as the indefatigable “Ironman,” an identity which he implicitly abandons. This is a symbolic rejection of his aspiration to become a machine; machines can neither love nor die. Love in particular is significant for Lee. He describes it as a uniquely human capacity that AI can never replicate or replace. Even as he shifts his personal priorities to place more emphasis on his family and less on his work, Lee’s epiphany leads him to develop new ideas about the value and direction of his work. In the book, he describes a possible future in which humans respond to the job loss that AI will likely cause by making love and care the foundation of a new economy. This insight demonstrates The Connection Between Personal Experience and Professional Acumen, as Lee’s personal ordeal reshapes the way he thinks about his work.
