Welcome to the book summary of AI 2041. In this book, 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, Lee and Chen introduce readers to an array of eye-opening characters and situations. 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.
This chapter describes a Plenitude era where the whole economy is reshaped by AI.
Contents
The author talked about four things in this chapter:
- What is Plenitude?
- How is Plenitude inevitable by the revolution of renewable energy and materials.
- How Plenitude invalidates existing economic models and institutions.
- How money might evolve and the design of the new currencies in Plenitude.
Plenitude
“We humans have long fantasized about the day when we no longer have to work, and everything is free.”
“Plenitude” describes a world where nothing is scarce, and everything is free. This is the word the author chose to denote a new phase of human life, in which all people are entitled to a comfortable life, as goods prices approach free and work becomes optional. With the advance of AI, the cost of living will be minimized which leaves people free to pursue higher purposes with their lives. However, it revealed to bring about as many problems as it solves.
How is Plenitude inevitable ? - Free Energy
The key driver of Plenitude is free energy. Solar and wind is the main renewable clean energy that leads us to a free energy world. The cost of energy will be less than 1/4 of today’s cost by 2030. More-progressive countries will benefit from it sooner like Australia. The cost of energy will keep dropping contigent on continued technology improvements and capital investment.
New Economic Models
Plenitude invalidates existing economic models and institutions. Economics is concerned with how individuals, businesses, governments and nations make choices about how to allocate resources. Economic models are theories about how to produce, distribute and consume scarce resources efficiently. However, when resource is unlimited, because of the low cost of energy, “the replicator can make anything, thus eliminating the need to work and trade. Without these needs, money and labor become redundant. Employment becomes optional and voluntary, and social status and respect become the new currency and people live for self-actualization.” as described in Star Trek.
Therefore, all the existing economic models and theories woule be invalidated and it will cause social unrest if we still follow the old rules. The younger group might be hit hardest by the employment upheaval, especially if they are the marginalized groups. There are no clear solutions to address the challenge yet, but re-defining the concept of “Money” is a plausible waypoint for such an evoluation.
New Money
The author imagines a world in which money has been reinvented gradually. It has three components:
- A Basic Life Card (BLC): participants would receive a monthly allowance to cover basic living expense and even entertainment. An improved version of the concept of universal basic income (UBI).
- A virtual credit and reward system (Moola): The system rewarded citizens for voluntary work and it operates like a credit score that supplanted other forms of currency. It takes continuous enhancement to overcome the design flaws of such a system. can motivate people without letting greedy people game the system.
- A revised program that encourages people to dream big: Moola seems to be a fair policy that put the unemployeed people on the resourcet that most needed, but it took away the dream and hope of these people. What if they have a dream in uncovering the mysteries of Mars? Therefore, the enhanced system would award not only empathy but also all higher layers of the Maslow hierarchy.
Challenges For Plenitude
1. A financial overhaul
All financial institutions such as central banks and stock markets will need to be reinvented or replaced. Transitioning from one economic model to another requires monumental efforts.
2. Corportations collebration
Corporations will refuse to accept the end of scarcity. Business like to create artificial scarcity in order to perputuate their profit. improbable shift for corporations to prioritize social responsibilitiy over profit.
What’s after PLenitude - Singularity?
In the world of AI, singularity is the moment in which machine intelligence outpaces human intelligence. Singularity utopians believe that AI will equipt human with near-magical tools and we must become cyborgs. Singularity dystopian believe superintelligent AI systems are self-improving programs that will want to make human totally irrelevant or control human.
No matter which directions we are heading, to achieve superintelligence in the future, more scientific breakthroughs like deep learning are needed.
Here conclude the end of this chapter, how would you vision the our world with AI in 20 years?