Tea or espresso?This routine query carries extra weight for sci-fi writer Chen Qiufan, a local of Chaoshan, southern Guangdong Province, who’s now based mostly in Shanghai.Chaoshan, in east of Guangdong Province, and its residents are effectively famous for preserving with many centuries-old traditions, together with the intricate tea etiquette.Chen’s debut novel “Waste Tide,” translated into English by Ken Liu, was set in Chaoshan, on a fictional island that processes digital waste recycling. Chinese myths and traditions, in addition to future tech, are intertwined in the cautionary story.Chen, a Peking University graduate, has labored for a lot of tech firms, together with Google and Baidu, based in Beijing or Shanghai. It wasn’t till “Waste Tide” that many realized that one of China’s sci-fi rising stars is from the space most well-known for its cuisines and traditions.”When I’m going again residence to Chaoshan, I not often drink espresso. Everyone there has tea units at residence, and of course, the similar is true for my grandparents,” Chen mentioned.”Then in Shanghai, there are such a lot of espresso outlets the place you meet mates, maintain e-book occasions or simply go for the espresso. Like many younger Chinese, espresso can be a should for me, however but I additionally preserve a full tea set in my workplace.”It was in between his conventional Chaoshan tea etiquette and the giant trendy choice of espresso in Shanghai that Chen completed “AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future,” a mix of scientific evaluation and predictions and fiction.Co-written with Kai-Fu Lee, a guru of synthetic intelligence and former head of Google in China, Chen was in cost of the fiction half, turning Lee’s visions into 10 alarming tales throughout the international panorama. They embrace an Indian teenager’s combat in opposition to a discriminatory algorithm, a German scientist’s evil quest for a “slaughter bot,” a sensible rest room that analyzes human excrement or meals suggestions based mostly on buy data and threat desire.”AI 2041″ has been chosen as sci-fi or AI e-book of the yr by numerous media together with the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.”It was a really intriguing first for me and for readers, too, I hope,” Chen mentioned. “As a sci-fi writer, I normally let my creativeness run wild based mostly on my analysis, and this time, the analysis comes from these working with the most superior, up to date and cutting-edge AI applied sciences and visions.”The sci-fi writer is not any stranger to synthetic intelligence. In 2018, he had already tried co-writing with AI. It was included in Chen’s assortment of brief tales “Algorithm for Life.”The program was educated on all of Chen’s previous writings with predictive keyboards imitating his use of phrases and combos. Chen gave it some key phrases and let the algorithm run free for a couple of paragraphs earlier than he realized it made no sense or did not have a cohesive plot.”It was extra like essays as an alternative of storytelling. It cannot produce a cohesive plot,” he mentioned as he defined how he started with the paragraphs generated by AI and imagined from there.The AI half comprised about 10 % of the story, however intriguingly, it was chosen as the greatest Chinese brief story of 2018, adopted in second by Nobel laureate Mo Yan. The rating, organized by a Shanghai literary journal, experimented with AI for the listing’s choice.Did AI acknowledge its solely peer, regardless that the AI wrote simply 10 % of the story?Creative writing utilizing algorithms has additional developed since Chen tried it in 2018. Last yr, he joined 10 different Chinese sci-fi writers in a writing experiment with a brand new AI writing program to create science fiction.When Chen tried the new algorithm, it wrote the following sentence: “Einstein from Beijing instructed us it was as soon as a black gap, a black gap nonetheless in operation …”Chen’s imaginative and prescient for AI has additionally expanded far past artistic writing.”‘AI 2041’ is mainly us imagining in 2021 what AI will seem like 20 years later,” he defined. “Twenty years in the future, we’ll collaborate and coexist with robots on a number of ranges. You can see such experiments in the present day in China, the place there are quite a bit of check zones the place synthetic intelligence co-manages a spot.”He added: “Isn’t it intriguing to have AI in our every day life, from tailor-making your favourite espresso to planning your profession? That brings comfort and effectivity, nevertheless it additionally comes with dangers of information leaks, discriminatory algorithms and data bubbles, amongst others. Solving such challenges requires extra than simply tech firms.”
https://www.shine.cn/feature/book/2201010329/
