The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity

I agree with some of the comments below, that the 3 scenarios illustrated at the end of this book may seem somewhat fantastical. However, the scenarios were prefaced as a ‘scenario’ not reality so not meant to be taken literally. I feel the book overall makes a very strong case and is essentially a plea - to AI innovators, tech leaders & all of us, or invest in the big 9 - to ask some of the harder questions that shape our technology-run future. This is a well constructed, written and researched argument; and one of the few books that has directly impacted my approach to technology.

Author had lived and worked in China and had some unique observations and knowledge about China’s AI landscape and the country’ national policies for it. The most significant value of this book is that it pointed out the weakness and strengths of both countries in regards of AI’s development and outlined the plans for US government and private enterprise, named collectively as G-Mafia( G=Google, M=Microsoft, A=Amazon, F=Facebook, I=IBM, and A=Apple) to work together to counter China’s totalitarian approach in the area. Though she painted some dystopian scenarios in the 10 to 30 years future, like some family members might get locked out of accessing refrigerators because of their unhealthy eating habits that are being tracked by their home AI monitoring systems, overall she is positive that the promise of AGI (Artificial Generative Intelligence) and ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence) would far outweigh its perils if our governments could act promptly and wisely to setup proper road safety guardrails for the fast speeding AI superhighway. AI hacking is becoming more and more sophisticated and intrusive as the Internet of Things (IOT) becomes widely adopted in homes and in every infrastructure that supports our daily routines. Imminent danger is not China attacking in traditional weaponry but through machine learning and software AI bugs. To avoid being superseded by China and to chose freedom over totalitarianism, US government must create a high office dedicated to long term AI strategies, independent of political ideologies and presidential tenures. It’s high time to answer the call of duty for an epic AI super war and to involve and educate public to better prepare for the coming onslaught of AI risks and opportunities simultaneously.

Interesting and thought provoking. Technology is a double edge sword. Good and bad at the same time and must be carefully managed and regulated.

I was super intrigued by The Big Nine’s subject: Artifical Intelligence b/c I’ve always wanted to learn more but found myself gravitating to books that were filled with concepts, language and examples that were (let’s be honest) over my head. This was so not the case with The Big Nine. The author, Amy Webb, has a great voice and breaks everything down so even the most novice of AI consumers can digest it. Looking forward to starting conversations at the bus stop, grocery line, water cooler and social events about AI b/c it is important for us all to understand how AI is impacting all of us now.

I picked up this book in order to learn more about each of the 9 companies mentioned in the title. Ali Baba, Amazon, Apple, Baidu, Facebook, Google, IBM, and Microsoft are featured on the cover. This book provides little to no insight into what these companies are doing beyond a general description. This is a public policy book not a book about AI or its impact on business, etc. The author’s public policy prescription is straightforward - the U.S. need a national and coordinated policy around AI, investments in AI skills and common ground rules that support innovation, growth and betterment of humanity. The author grinds on the difference between the lack of a coordinated policy and the unified, coordinated and directed public policy in China. China views AI as their means to create a society tailored to the behaviors and consumption patterns that best fit the ruling classes needs. The author believes they are positioned to rule the future in ways that are advantageous to them and not to the west. For a quantitative futurist, the book is very light on data or other quantitative factors. The author offers three very simplistic scenarios about the future. A bright one where the US government makes big investments, chooses not to regulate the big nine and China is isolated to a degree that it gives into the U.S. A pragmatic one, where the US does nothing, AI remains fragmented and China isolates the U.S. and a pessimistic one where all of our worst fears are realized. Not sure I needed to wade through more than 100 pages to get to this. Overall if your want a relatively simple policy book, then consider this. Otherwise if you are looking for a book to learn more about AI, then look elsewhere.

The author well describes the 9 most important firms and the quality of the two AI superpowers, but then makes a huge mistake in blaming for the possible danger of war between the two on China. It is difficult even to understand the shift from announcing that to judge who is doing what is enough to have a look at the fact that China had no conflict with foreign countries since the Vietnam war. I believe she has fallen victim of the powers that occupied key positions in governing the U.S.: mafia of the military and weapons industry.

This book is a very good introduction to the world of AI, what it is and what it isn’t. The author succinctly lays out the basics as well as the opportunities and the risks in our current geopolitical and corporate worlds. She lays out some scenarios as to a world where is done right and what could happen if it is done poorly. This book should be read by anyone with an interest in AI and its implications

La Webb immagina il modo in cui i nove colossi tecnologici globali - Google, Ibm, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook e Apple per gli Usa e Alibaba, Baidu e Tencent per la Cina - cambieranno il mondo nei prossimi 50 anni. L'autrice sottolinea che “Da un lato ci sono i titani della Silicon Valley, con la loro visione commerciale e privata. Dall' altro la Cina, che foraggia la ricerca nell’intelligenza Artificiale, con immensi investimenti statali e una pianificazione governativa. Oggi i colossi Usa pensano solo al breve termine: sono assillati dal mostrare i risultati agli investitori e quindi i software di intelligenza artificiale non sono progettati per essere trasparenti o comprensibili, ma solo per vendere soluzioni, come Siri o Alexa, e non scontentare Wall Street”. L’autrice mette in guarda sulle possibili implicazioni di queste due divergenti visioni del mondo; la Cina sembra essere in vantaggio non solo per il sistema decisionale unitario ma anche per l’assenza di limiti alla ricerca. Nel breve – lungo periodo IBM e FaceBook verranno assorbite così come Google e Amazon si fonderanno in una unica società. La Webb immagina tre scenari, dal più ottimistico al più pessimistico. Il confronto del periodo della guerra fredda sembra nulla rispetto al dinamismo internazionale attuale, in un mondo fluido interconnesso ma disomogeneo in troppe componenti. La politica occidentale sembra assente da questo dibattito. Testo importante per comprendere le dinamiche prossime future che riguarderanno l’AI. Pur tuttavia la seconda parte appare nettamente inferiore alla prima e a tratti noiosa.

The book is an excellent treatment of AI and its implications for humanity. Everyone is of the opinion that AI will rule the world. However, all technologies have a darker side. The book looks at some of the darker applications of AI and sketches out three scenarios, a doomsday one, an optimistic one and a practical one. It then goes on to describe the actions needed to achieve the the third option where AI will serve humanity but also be kept in check from creating problems for humanity.

Amy Webb is a professor of strategic forecasting at the NYU Stern School of Business. She writes: ‘Researchers building the future of AI work overwhelmingly at nine tech giants: Google, Amazon, Apple, IBM, Microsoft and Facebook in the United States, and Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent in China… The US government has no grand strategy for AI nor for our longer-term futures. Instead of funding basic research into AI, the federal government has effectively outsourced R&D to the commercial sector and the whims of Wall Street… Meanwhile, in China, AI’s developmental track is tethered to the grand ambitions of government. Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba may be publicly traded giants, but typical of all large Chinese companies, they must bend to the will of Beijing… In July 2017, the Chinese government unveiled its Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan to become the global leader in AI by the year 2030, with a domestic industry worth at least $150 billion… State-level surveillance in China is enabled by the BAT, who are in turn emboldened through the country’s various institutional and industrial policies. Alibaba’s Zhima Credit service hasn’t publicly disclosed that it is part of the national credit system; however, it is calculating a person’s available credit line based on things like what the person is buying and who his or her friends are on Alipay’s social network. In 2015, Zhima Credit’s technology director publicly said that buying diapers would be considered ‘responsible behaviour,’ while playing video games for too long would be counted as a demerit… In what will later be viewed as one of the most pervasive and insidious social experiments on humankind, China is using AI in an effort to create an obedient populace. The State Council’s AI 2030 plan explains that AI will ‘significantly elevate the capability and level of social governance’ and will be relied on to play ‘an irreplaceable role in effectively maintaining social stability.’ This is being accomplished through China’s national Social Credit Score system, which according to the State Council’s founding charter will ‘allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.’… In the city of Rongcheng, an algorithmic social credit scoring system has already proven that AI works. Its 740,000 adult citizens are each assigned 1000 points to start, and depending on behavior, points are added or deducted. Performing a ‘heroic act’ might earn a resident 30 points, while blowing through a traffic light would automatically deduct 5 points. Citizens are labeled and sorted into different brackets ranging from A+++ to D, and their choices and ability to move around freely are dictated by their grade. The C bracket might discover that they must first pay a deposit to rent a public bike, while the A group gets to rent them for free for 90 minutes… AI-powered directional microphones and smart cameras now dot the highways and streets of Shanghai. Drivers who honk excessively are automatically issued a ticket via Tencent’s WeChat, while their names, photographs, and national identity card numbers are displayed on nearby LED billboards. If a driver pulls over on the side of the road for more than seven minutes, they will trigger another instant traffic ticket. It isn’t just the ticket and the fine – points are deducted in the driver’s social credit score. When enough points are deducted, they will find it hard to book airline tickets or land a new job…’ In his recent book on artificial intelligence, ‘AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley and the New World Order’, Kai-Fu Lee, the former president of Google China, writes that: ‘China and the United States have already jumped out to an enormous lead over all the other countries in artificial intelligence, setting the stage for a new kind of bipolar world order. Several other countries – the United Kingdom, France, and Canada, to name a few – have strong AI research labs staffed with great talent, but they lack the venture-capital ecosystem and large user bases to generate the data that will be key in the age of implementation that follows the age of discovery. Whatever gaps exist between China and the United States, those differences will pale in comparison between these two AI superpowers and the rest of the world…’ These dystopian scenarios of the United States and China using AI to control their own populations and to dominate the rest of the world are quite plausible. As Professor Webb points out, the prospect of China dominating the world through AI is particularly disturbing. In 2019 Freedom House, which ranks the countries of the world based on their respect for human rights, ranked China almost dead last, with a freedom score of 11 out of 100. The United States does much better, with a score of 86 out of 100, but still considerably lower than Sweden (100), Finland (100), Norway (100), the Netherlands (99), or Canada (99). This is one reason why several of the top AI experts in the world have chosen to live in Canada (cf. on YouTube the Bloomberg Businessweek video, ‘The Rise of AI’). Despite the race between the US and China to dominate the world in their own national interests, in the longer run, with the advent of artificial general intelligence, it is unlikely that superintelligent beings will be constrained by such petty nationalism. Webb writes: ‘AI’s cognitive ability will not only supersede us – it could become wholly unrecognizable to us, because we do not have the biological processing power to understand what it is. For us, encountering a superintelligent machine would be like a chimpanzee sitting in on a city council meeting. The chimp might recognize that there are people in the room and that he can sit down on a chair, but a long-winded argument about whether to add bike lanes to a busy intersection? He wouldn’t have anywhere near the cognitive ability to decipher the language being used, let alone the reasoning and experience to grok why bike lanes are so controversial. In the long evolution of intelligence and our road to artificial superintelligence, we humans are analogous to the chimpanzee…’ In his book on AI, Life 3.0, Professor Max Tegmark makes an even more humbling analogy: ‘Suppose a bunch of ants create you to be a recursively self-improving robot, much smarter than them, who shares their goals and helps build bigger and better anthills, and that you eventually attain the human-level intelligence and understanding that you have now. Do you think you’ll spend the rest of your days just optimizing anthills, or do you think you might develop a taste for more sophisticated questions and pursuits that the ants have no ability to comprehend? If so, do you think you’ll find a way to override the ant-protection urge that your formicine creators endowed you with, in much the same way that the real you overrides some of the urges your genes have given you? And in that case, might a superintelligent friendly AI find our current human goals as uninspiring and vapid as you find those of the ants, and evolve new goals different from those it learned and adopted from us? Perhaps there’s a way of designing a self-improving AI that’s guaranteed to retain human-friendly goals forever, but I think it’s fair to say that we don’t yet know how to build one – or even whether it’s possible…’

Lectura muy recomendable en estos tiempos de la inteligencia artificial,

The book does not only give a great overview of the history of AI and current main projects but aso asks fundamental questions about what makes us human and in what kind of world we want to live. Very good book!