AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

Why I Picked It Up / How It Read

I picked this up as a part of a book club. It was a light read and provided some insightful historical context, although it felt outdated reading it now in 2026 while it was written before the LLM proliferation. Still, I enjoyed it!

What I Took Away

• The most insightful idea in the book was the trade between privacy and improving AI. To hold on to your privacy and don't allow AI to be trained on your data and accept limited utility and personalization from AI, or accept the loss of privacy and get greater convenience? Personally, I prefer my privacy, but it was interesting seeing how different cultures approach this.
• I knew about the Chinese copy-cat website phenomena, but I did not realize it was this widespread and normalized. The way the author narrates this part and how there was zero shame in carbon copying like that. It made me realize how wildly different the conception of copyright in different areas of the world.
• His description of what he thinks the world would look like with AI integrated everywhere did not really appeal to me; other than the better health diagnostics, his vision for AI everyday assistant was not something I liked.
• The chapters about his personal story and the struggle with cancer were touching, but the "I changed my whole worldview after I got cancer" is a bit cliche to be honest, but, each to their own! I respect the author either way, and I do not see anything wrong with either worldviews he took.