Few Countries Will Benefit From the AI Revolution (qz.com)

hackingbear writes from a report via Quartz: According to Chinese venture capitalist and former Google China president Kai-Fu Lee, the list of countries well-positioned to embrace a future powered by artificial intelligence is exceedingly short: United States and China. "The countries that are not in good shape are the countries that have perhaps a large population, but no AI, no technologies, no Google, no Tencent, no Baidu, no Alibaba, no Facebook, no Amazon," Lee says. "These people will basically be data points to countries whose software is dominant in their country. If a country in Africa uses largely Facebook and Google, they will be providing their data to help Facebook and Google make more money, but their jobs will still be replaced nevertheless." Originally, China's low labor costs might have helped the country modernize, Lee says, but as AI-driven automation takes hold in manufacturing, other countries that want to follow China's blueprint for economic growth probably wouldn't be able to rely on cheap labor alone.

Comments

Everyone benefits

[SuperKendall]

Even the poorest of countries will benefit directly from AI. It will mean improved everything - better materials, better components, better electronics made far more cheaply to the point where people in poor countries can afford them better.

In even the poorest of countries, most people have cell phones now. Why are you suddenly doubting some new and useful technology will make its way there?

Not to mention, as more and more things like automated tractors come to be, it makes it more practical to send equipment rather than cash to poor nations - which mean the people may actually get it, unlike the cash which seems to vanish before it ever reaches those it is meant to help.

Re:Everyone benefits

[BitterOak]

Exactly! Saying only the U.S. and China will benefit from AI would have been like saying that only the UK would benefit from the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th Century. Countries all over the world use machine-based factories and benefit from their invention even though it basically started in the UK.

Re: Everyone benefits

[Anne Thwacks]

UK got rich by slavery in sugar plantations etc. In the long run others benefit also but it all starts with slavery

A few British pirates, drug dealers, etc got rich from slavery.

The average person in the UK at the time lived in very similar conditions to the slaves (except the weather is much worse in Manchester than in Jamaica). We keep hearing that 30% of slaves died on some ships during the long passage, and very rarely hear that almost 100% of crew (not officers) died before the ships reached Africa, where the shortage of crew (many "press ganged" on board unwillingly - ie slaves) was made up by recruiting "Kru boys" (ie men from Kru tribe in Sierra Leone, known to be good sailors),, and where up to 50% of fare paying passengers died on the longer voyage to India. Why did they take such risks? cos in Europe, up to 1/3 of the population died in each outbreak of plague.

It is also worth pointing out that in the UK, slavery is not associated with colour - there were no black slaves in the UK.

Some history is told with political bias - even before Zuck was born.

Totally disagree, dilsproportiatley benefits poor

[SuperKendall]

I think the idea is that America and China will benefit disproportionately better than the rest of the world.

That is utter nonsense.

AI for a place like the US or China means what? Maybe some of us aren't driving ourselves. Some of the vast amount of stuff we get is marginally cheaper. We have the equivalent of personal assistants - many of us on Slashdot are essentially living a large part of this future already.

Meanwhile a poor village in India or Africa gets a solar panel and cell phones, it's 10000x improvement in quality of living. In the future maybe they get drone delivered medicine (as they are already starting to do today) and maybe some children are living that did not before. Maybe a region gets an automated agricultural facility, suddenly now they have more food than ever before. Maybe there's an automated irrigation bot that comes and build canals to fields. Maybe they get pre-fab structures that actually self-clean and resist disease instead of harboring it like grass/mud huts.

The list goes on, but basically ANYTHING they get is a n utterly massive improvement not just in quality, but QUANTITY of life itself.

There is simply no comparison, at this point the most advanced nations are absolutely the ones seeing incremental improvement from technology.

No matter what, AI combined with Intellectual Property laws will be used to create scarcity to simulate a market of supply and demand

Not in poor regions where hacked 3D printers can and will create anything of interest, bypassing all IP laws. It happened for movies and music already, and there's no reason to think it cannot happen to physical objects as well.

Re:Totally disagree, dilsproportiatley benefits po

[mikael]

They are jumping straight to mobile phone networks and skipping landlines. For a fisherman wanting to sell fish, this allows him to find the best port to sell fish at the highest price. Coastal villages don't go hungry because they never got anyone to land a catch. A few text messages let them run like an Amazon marketplace.