Kai-Fu Lee The Rising Tide: A Jobless Future Is Coming • 21st/Sep/2018
Interviewed by 52 Insights
He spent his formative years helping charter a path of innovation for companies like Microsoft and Apple. But it was when he spearheaded a failed attempt to bring Google to the Chinese market that everything changed for him, Kai-Fu Lee left Google in 2009 to set up his own venture capital fund Sinnovation in order to champion the local tech economy.
A profoundly powerful and influential character in his home country, he has accrued around 50 million followers who hangs on his every word on the microblogging site Weibo.
The China he champions today is glimmering with innovation but the West still view this giant with a sense of trepidation, an enigmatic nation still very much in the process of crafting its global message.
But it isn’t China that he says we should be worried about, Kai-Fu Lee wants to use his influence to prepare the world for the imminent AI automation apocalypse.
By Kai-Fu’s estimates automation will decimate up to 40-50% of jobs across the world but with enough creativity and compassion we might be able to plug that leak before it caves in entirely. By his standards this is not a test drill and governments everywhere should be forewarned and prepared with serious policies in hand before civil unrest starts to take hold.
We sat down with Kai-Fu Lee to discuss the enigma that is China, why Google will struggle to succeed in the largest tech nation on earth and why governments need to take automation very seriously.