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China Has Caught Up To U.S. In AI, Says AI Expert Kai-Fu Lee

Skeptical. But, wonder if will trigger major funding boost if true.


Any credible list of influential books about tech from the last decade would include AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley and the New World Order by Kai-Fu Lee. Considered the world’s foremost authority on artificial intelligence, Taipei-born Lee got an early start, writing a pioneering speech-recognition program while a student at Carnegie Mellon in the 1980s. He later had a career in China and the U.S. at Apple, Microsoft, Silicon Graphics and Google, where he was president of Google China. Now based in Beijing, Lee runs a venture capital firm called Sinovation, which focuses on AI investments. The interview with Lee took place (virtually) in early October.

Forbes Asia: AI Superpowers made you a global business star. Why did you write the book?

Kai-Fu Lee: China has—thanks to data, AI, and the entrepreneur ecosystem—rapidly evolved from a copycat into a true innovator. It currently co-leads artificial intelligence with the United States. When AI Superpowers came out in 2018, I think it was a bit surprising to people.

Scientists Seek To Inject Microscopic Robots Into Patients To Hunt Disease

Would you be okay to have these injected in you?


Engineers at Cornell University developed a microscopic robot – so small it’s invisible to the naked eye – that walks. It’s so tiny that ten could fit within a period. The team says they can manufacture one million of the robots per week.

The new robot is essentially a microchip on four origami-inspired legs that can be activated by lasers. It was designed to crawl inside the human body, find and eliminate diseases. It can be steered by beaming a laser at its feet, which causes their leg to bend.

Itai Cohen and Paul McEuen Labs, leaders of this invention, envisions them as a beneficial medical tool to do things like hunt down and destroy cancer cells. The micro-bots are so small they can be injected into the body.

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