This is a summary of the book titled “AI 2041: Ten visions of the future” written by AI expert Kai-fu Lee and fiction author Chen Qiufan and published by Currency in 2021. As AI permeates all walks of life and its usage is moving beyond large-language models to agentic frameworks, the authors envision its role in 2041. They alternate between stories and nonfiction analyses and remain hopeful for AI to lift poverty, improve healthcare and let people lead meaningful lives.

Deep AI, a recent breakthrough in machine learning, can provide tailored health advice. AI programming works through layers of neural networks, mimicking the human brain's functioning to maximize a specified aim. Deepfakes, which rely on computer vision, can create serious problems for governments and businesses. By 2041, anti-deepfake software is predicted to serve a similar purpose as antivirus software. In healthcare, digitization has led to more efficient and accurate AI, with researchers focusing on harnessing massive databases of digitized patient records for drug and vaccine development and "precision medicine." AI will speed up the development of vaccines and drugs, potentially reducing development costs but can also reproduce societal prejudices like racism.

AI-driven autonomous vehicles will transform transportation by providing on-demand cars, safer, and cheaper than human-driven vehicles. However, ethical and legal issues arise, such as the ability of AI to make complex ethical choices and determine responsibility for fatalities. This is similar to the invention of gunpowder and nuclear bombs, and the development of AI-driven weapons, such as the Israeli Harpy drone and "slaughterbots." Autonomous weapons will become faster, more precise, and cheaper to make, but ethical objections to delegating killing to machines outweigh their benefits. Mass unemployment may exacerbate economic and social inequality, while technology companies may benefit. Society must reconfigure old jobs and generate new ones, with the possibility of an AI-inspired creative renaissance where people revere creativity, compassion, and humanity.

Lee and Qiufan present human conjecture about AI's future through speculative fiction and rigorous analysis. They provide emotional consideration of likely facts and imaginative interpretations, making their work readable, fascinating, and thought-provoking. They use available data to turn information into narrative.