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Reading lists

The best books about AI

Ten Visions for Our Future

AI 2041

To say that AI 2041 is enlightening and valuable, is to understate its significance... AI 2041's scientific fiction gives us a way to open our eyes to what is actually going on all around us and where things are heading

The book brims with intriguing insights into the ways industries could harness intelligent machines... AI 2041 is a manifesto for us to seek out the best in this technology

An invaluable and entertaining vision of the future

Ray Dalio, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of PRINCIPLES

The perfect fusion of science and fiction, illuminating the pervasive impact artificial intelligence will have in our lives and the challenges we face in shaping a techno-future that benefits all of humanity

We have reached a momentous inflection point with AI, and no other book I've read captures it with such stunning insight and imagination

Arianna Huffington, founder and CEO, Thrive Global

Through amazingly entertaining stories, Lee and Chen take us on an immersive trip through the future and then zoom out with exceptionally clear explanations of the technology at work... enjoyable and eye-opening

By blending imaginative storytelling and technical expertise, Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan bring to life a vision for AI that addresses both our curiosity and our fears... Captivating

This inspired collaboration between a pioneering technologist and a visionary writer of science fiction offers bold and urgent insights into how these technologies may impact our lives

In this provocative, utterly original work, Kai-Fu Lee, the former president of Google China and bestselling author of AI Superpowers, teams up with celebrated novelist Chen Qiufan to imagine our world in 2041 and how it will be shaped by AI. In ten gripping short stories

AI 2041 builds a multilayered view of a future where artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled technologies become embedded in our lives, for good or ill...Well-crafted . . . This book serves as an imaginative invitation to consider the potential for harm that may arise from [AI] projects, however unintended

Kai-Fu Lee (Author) Kai-Fu Lee is the CEO of Sinovation Ventures and New York Times bestselling author of AI Superpowers and co-author of AI 2041, which was named a best book of 2021 by The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Financial Times. Lee was formerly the president of Google China and a senior executive at Microsoft, SGI, and Apple. Co-chair of the Artificial Intelligence Council at the World Economic Forum, and was named to the Time 100 and Wired 25 Icons lists. He is based in Beijing. Chen Qiufan (Author) Chen Qiufan (aka Stanley Chan) is an award-winning author, translator, creative producer, and curator. He is the president of the World Chinese Science Fiction Association. His works include Waste Tide, Future Diseases, and The Algorithm for Life. The founder of Thema Mundi, a content development studio, he lives in Beijing and Shanghai.

A WALL STREET JOURNAL, WASHINGTON POST, AND FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 
*Now with a new foreword on ChatGPT* 
_____________ 
 
How will artificial intelligence change our world within twenty years? 
 
AI will be the defining development of the twenty-first century. Within two decades, aspects of daily human life will be unrecognizable. AI will generate unprecedented wealth, revolutionize medicine and education through human-machine symbiosis, and create brand new forms of communication and entertainment. However, AI will also challenge the organizing principles of our economic and social order and bring new risks in the form of autonomous weapons and smart technology that inherits human bias. AI is at a tipping point, and people need to wake up-both to AI's radiant pathways and its existential perils for life as we know it. 
 
In this provocative, utterly original work of "scientific fiction," 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 AI world in 2041 in ten gripping short stories. 
 
Gazing toward a not-so-distant horizon, AI 2041 offers urgent insights into our collective future and reminds us that we are the authors of our own destiny.

Kai-Fu Lee

Kai-Fu Lee is a world-class researcher who realized very early that neural networks were the future of AI. He is also a leading investor, and an accomplished business leader, so he speaks with great authority when he describes how companies should incorporate AI and how people can remain relevant

Geoffrey Hinton, Nobel Laureate in Physics (2024) and Turing Award winner

This is the guide every leader needs to figure out what to do with AI. As a pioneering computer scientist, successful founder, and influential investor, Kai-Fu Lee is uniquely positioned to understand the challenges and opportunities of smart machines for organizations. His advice is timely, strategic, and actionable.

Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of HIDDEN POTENTIAL and THINK AGAIN, and host of the podcast Re:Thinking

I hear the same question again and again from top executives: how do we turn AI pilots into real business results? Kai-Fu Lee answers that question with extraordinary clarity in AI Native: the key is not simply adopting new technology, but transforming the business itself — its workflows, decision rights, talent, data, and culture. This book is the operating manual for the largest economic transformation since the Industrial Revolution

Erik Brynjolfsson, Stanford professor, co-author of best-selling The Second Machine Age, and co-founder of Workhelix.

Economists have long understood that organizations run on asymmetric information: those who act know what those who decide cannot see. Kai-Fu Lee understands that AI's most profound effect at the enterprise level is to attack that asymmetry at its root. Complex principal-agent structures are jettisoned as nearly free intelligence confronts the full set of unstructured data, making it accessible to everyone. AI Native turns that insight into a concrete, compelling operating model. Its account of giving leaders undistorted sight into their own companies is the most illuminating thing I have read on what cheap intelligence will truly do inside an enterprise

Michael Spence, Nobel laureate in economics and Dean Emeritus, Stanford Graduate School of Business

Kai-Fu Lee is among our most prescient thinkers and writers on the subject of artificial intelligence. AI Native shows why organizations must rethink how they learn, organize, build IP, and thrive in this new era. It is a powerful call for an AI future where human expertise is amplified and value flows broadly across every company, every industry, and every country

Even in the C-suite at some of the world’s biggest companies, the AI revolution is underhyped. Finally, here’s a book for leaders who sense AI’s vast potential but need a roadmap. As Kai-Fu Lee argues with brilliance and clarity, the boring parts of the business—your company’s accumulated trove of knowledge—is where the extraordinary value is hiding, and you can tap into it by adopting AI, adopting it fast, and adopting it right

Eric Schmidt, former CEO, Google; bestselling author, The Age of AI

AI Native is a clear, urgent, and practical guide to redesigning organizations around abundant intelligence, while preserving meaning, dignity, and human purpose.

Peter Brown, CEO, Renaissance Technologies

Kai-Fu Lee has long been one of the clearest and most thoughtful voices on how AI is transforming business and society. In AI Native, he offers leaders a practical guide to reimagining how organizations work—and how people and AI can come together to solve meaningful problems and create lasting value

As a scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, Kai-Fu Lee has helped shape the AI revolution from its earliest days. With AI Native, he has written an essential guide for leaders building the next generation of great companies. Drawing on decades of experience, he shows that succeeding in the AI era demands not just deploying new tools, but transforming every company into an agentic enterprise by redesigning how they operate, innovate, and connect with customers.

Marc Benioff, chair and CEO of Salesforce

As machine cognition advances, human comparative advantage moves to the open-ended problems, where a person stands between the tool and the need it serves. Mastering this transformation takes more than layoffs. Leaders must move their organizations and workforces toward that work, where value is growing, and away from the tasks machines now automate. AI Native is written for the executives who must make that move.

David Autor, Department Head, MIT Department of Economics

The Mandate to Transform Your Company

As the cost of intelligence collapses, every organization must rethink how it operates, competes, and creates value. In his new book, AI legend and New York Times bestselling author of AI Superpowers and AI 2041 Kai-Fu Lee offers a sweeping roadmap for how leaders can position their business for the AI age 
 
“Kai-Fu Lee is among our most prescient thinkers and writers…. Powerful.”—Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO 
 
The most expensive thing your company buys is human thinking. What happens when it becomes almost free? 
 
This is the single most consequential question facing business leaders for a generation, and many are struggling to answer it. 
 
AI is not simply another technology cycle but a fundamental transformation in the economics of business. Kai-Fu Lee has spent the past four decades pioneering AI in business from nearly every vantage point: as an AI researcher, senior executive at Apple, Microsoft, and Google, founder of Sinovation Ventures, and now CEO of 01.AI. Few authors can match his combination of technical expertise, business leadership, and international renown. 
 
In AI Native, he draws from this unique experience to offer a radical new roadmap for company leaders to navigate the AI agent revolution. With punchy, insightful prose, Lee dispels the “four lies” CEOs are being told about AI, including that it’s “just another technology cycle” and that “AI will let us shrink the workforce,” and argues that CEOs must assume responsibly themselves for seeing the AI transformation through successfully. Lee offers advice on how to structure teams with agentic AI and reveals the power and potential of using AI to tap into the hidden collection of knowledge contained inside companies and organizations. 
 
This is not a book about chatbots. It is a book about leadership. The future belongs to leaders who direct their companies before the market does. 
 
Authoritative and filled with clear, actionable advice, AI Native is the only book leaders need to navigate the defining management challenge of our time.

Kai-Fu Lee

Books by Kai-Fu Lee

Articles featuring Kai-Fu Lee

The best books about AI

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