AI Book Club discussion of AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

0:01 Hi, my name is Tom Johnson and this is a recording of an AI book club held August 17, 2025. We're discussing Kaifu Lee's book uh titled AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order. It was originally published in 2018, but is surprisingly relevant and seems to uh align a lot a lot with today's events, especially around China, which is why I selected this book. Um, if you're new to the AI book club or if you're thinking about joining, you can find more details at I'd ratherbewriting.com/ai-book-club. [Music] And uh it has the upcoming schedule. We

0:48 typically read about a book a month and the books are uh generally about AI trying to align with whatever topics are are current and interesting. Uh the book club gives us an excuse to just dive into some of these books and then have a a good discussion with other people who have read them. The the people don't necessarily need to be technical writers. you can be of any project and or any role any company. Um it just uh you just need to have an interest in AI. Uh typically we do have a lot of technical writers though because that's my audience and so you'll find um at least half or twothirds of the people do have techcom backgrounds or tech backgrounds. So we we often bring that

1:35 lens to try to understand AI in the context of of that role and how it affects us. So again this is a discussion so topics are all over the place. There's uh three people plus me in this book club discussion and it goes on for about an hour. So thanks for listening. Uh I'm excited that both of you came to this book club. Uh last month was kind of a downer because nobody showed up. But then again, it's summer and so many people are traveling. But um this book this time actually uh a lot of people really liked. Sorry, I'm trying to hold it up. Um I'm sure it's backwards, right? It's so why I didn't even hold that up. But uh

2:21 maybe some others will join. Maybe maybe not. But hey, three people is enough for a discussion and I'm hoping to have that uh here as well. Um, so let's kick things off. Florence and Molly, uh, what did you think of this book? Like, did you have any general reactions? Did you like it or did you dislike it or did you think it was dated or still relevant? Feel free. Okay. Sure. Sure. Yeah. I mean, overall, I liked it. Um, I learned a lot about things that I hadn't considered. Like, I haven't really been thinking about what's going on with China and AI at all. So, it was great for that. I I got so much out of just hearing how Chinese businesses, like their their tactics when they

3:08 compete with other companies, like some of the stories he told about like the Q versus Chihu uh whole faceoff thing. It's just like fascinating like it's just businesses operate a little bit differently there and I thought it was really interesting to learn about that. Um what else? Um I did I did have questions about the the timing of it since it did come out I think it was 2018 was when it came out. So the there's yeah there's like I don't know enough about AI to know if what I'm thinking is right but like I don't I don't know if things are playing out exactly like he said they would. Um, so there's that side of it. Um, I thought his idea about the social

3:55 investment stipen, I think that's what it was called. I thought it was interesting, but I feel like there's probably holes in that idea that could could, you know, like could make it so it doesn't work out. I don't know. I thought but I liked it. I like that he gave a lot of attention to the labor question because I feel like a lot of the books we've read have kind of given a little like call out to it and then moved on to something else. Yeah. Well, those are all great points. I jotted down a few notes just to jump off and discuss some of those points. But before we do that, Florence, what were what was your highle reaction to the book? I liked it. I it um I like that it it caught me because yeah, like Molly said,

4:40 I didn't I I I guess I'm very us- centric that I didn't consider what you know the chi like China's impact and how AI was developing there and and the whole uh I I read somewhere like I think in your summary, the duopoly, you know, this this this race for AI. So that like to that was like something new to me that I wanted to learn about. Okay, just uh uh full disclosure, I I' I I've gotten through the first half and then I just read your summary for the second half, but I read the last chapter so I knew

5:26 where where it was going. Um, so I just right before this call, I asked Chat GPT, okay, how do the forecasts of this book stand up in 2025? And it said that it's pretty pretty, you know, it's held up pretty well. So that was what interested me. Yeah. th the um welcome Remy. I just want to pause and say hi. Thanks for joining. We're just talking about highlevel reactions to the book and uh Molly and Florence were kind of going over different points that they that jumped

6:13 out at them. Um and I thought we should jump off on some of these uh because they're they provide excellent starting points and we'll ask you in a minute what your high level reactions are too. But um the the first one just that the sense of an eyeopening about China and their competition dominance kind of excellence in this whole field. I think we are very US- ccentric ch typically people actually Remy I don't know where are you US or are you outside of the US? I am in I'm in New York. Oh okay. Another east coaster. Okay. Well, uh, the, uh, uh, we've got Boston and New York as well. Um, yeah, I think we tend to be pretty

6:59 myopic about, uh, just like our our world views in general. And this this was an eye openener for me about about China's um, like extreme competitive dominance in this space. And it's kind of a scary I don't know if scary is the right the right word, but it's sobering to think about like um what it would look like if China wins the AI race. Maybe some people think they've already won in many respects. Um but I started gathering different articles like I I just started seeing all these articles now. Um and I started listing a few here. um where

7:45 let me see if I share my screen. Yeah. So, just like I'm keeping my eyes open and as I'm reading different news sites, uh I just keep seeing articles like this. China's biotech is cheaper and faster. This is like today talking about how they're they're able to produce so many of these mainstream pharmaceutical drugs cheaper and faster, which is what so many people want and need. Um, I work in in an autorelated domain. So, I've been following the car industry news from for a long time. And basically, the only reason that there's still an American car industry is because we've tariffed China's EVs so much. Um, otherwise they would probably just decimate the car industry here. Um, the energy sector is also like dominating.

8:31 Uh, we've got another article on energy. These are all just pretty recent articles talking about how China is kind of like uh really knocking it out of the park here. AI experts returned from China stunned. The US grid is so weak the race may already be over. Talking about how like energy which is used to power so many data models and so on and all the AI infrastructure is just sort of everywhere. Um this energy availability. So, uh, it it's eye opening to read this book that was written in 2018 talking about like, hey, China has a real chance of of not just uh competing but overtaking the US and so on. And it

9:16 looks like a lot of this seems to be happening. Um, do you do you notice uh like are you um noticing more articles as you read the news about China's uh like dominance in in different fields and AI and so on? Yeah. I mean that the book like that that was probably the main uh takeaway for me from the book is to to recognize that yeah the world is is really probably a duopoly. I I don't know if I I was really hoping some Europeans would join today because I know we have some people in France who who've participated in the past and I wonder what their opinion is. I mean it's it's not like France is not in the AI game. they've got mistral and other other things um

10:04 going on. But uh that to see the world as a duopoly between China and the US basically leading the pack in the same way that like corporate dominance can be centered on a handful of big trillion dollar companies. Um it's kind of unsettling as well, right? Um anyway, Remy, tell us your high level thoughts on the book. What did you what did you think of it? Yeah. Well, nice to meet you all. Um, this is my first AI book club with you guys, so happy to be here and thanks for creating space. Tom, um, yeah, I, um, I mean, I found it fascinating. I had some of the same reactions in terms of, you know, just not previously having had a deep understanding of where China fit into this puzzle. And I mean, I I really

10:51 liked the way the author framed a lot of it. Um, I thought, you know, it had a nice sort of warm ending. I didn't expect but um but I agree with a lot of the takeaways about kind of moving to a more humanistic way of you know sort of human service jobs and and constructing a society around sort of supporting each other. Um I do think that you know I I mean what was most kind of eye openening for me was understanding how you know this has not been like in in previous waves like the previous general purpose technologies China's really not been in a place to um meet the moment in the way that the US has but but they really are now and I I think what I find most striking is just the manufacturing

11:37 difference. I mean, he talks about how, you know, you could sort of um automate parts of that and maybe the US will eventually go that direction, but right now it's so China dominant that I can totally see the third and fourth waves of AI going that way. um and and having some kind of bottleneck or really sort of demanding a um you know a a kind of turning over of US society and how we how we manufacture here. Um the other thought I had was just you know to this point about I don't want to say who should win and he talks about not framing it as a race with a winner, right? I I mean I agree

12:22 with that framing although I think I have some pessimism about that just given the state of the political sphere um internationally but there are really significant political and cultural implications to China versus the US becoming the dominant force in global AI. And I think, you know, I guess one thing I was kind of surprised by, I mean, he he tried not to go deep on like moral judgments on the political systems, but I think you have to to really consider this critically. Like there there's a very significant difference between the political systems and setups. And I think part of the reason that there's so much, at least my understanding, part of the reason there's so much fear and concern about AI winning or sorry, China winning the

13:08 AI race is because of the implications of that for global democratic institutions and and culture, for example. So that was one of the things that kind of stuck with me in the end is like there's there's a really big question mark here about what happens if China does kind of overtake in those third and fourth waves. Wow. You've got you've got great insights here. Um, just questions. Mostly just questions. But yeah, that that last point about the the political impact of China sort of winning and dominating is an interesting thing to think about. Um, it made it reminded me of this TV show that was pretty popular a few years ago called Man in the High Castle. Not sure if you've uh seen that, but that's like one of these imagined his rehistoric I don't

13:56 know what you call it, but they like imagined historical revisions and it it reimagines how history would have played out if the Nazis had won World War II. Um I mean, you've seen other kind of reimaginings like this, too. Uh uh I think there was one on Apple TV about like if Russia was the first one to uh put a person on Mars or or not Mars on the moon or something. But how would things play out politically if China was basically dominating in so many aspects? Would we see a decline in democratic institutions? Would people just decide that democracies were weak and that we needed more authoritarian shaping and government um subsidizing and and and uh

14:42 forcing of different economies and markets and so on. It it is interesting how that would play out. Um yeah, and it's unknowable, right? But sorry, go ahead. Oh, no. I was just going to say I I totally lost my thought, but like first I I think that your point about how it impacts the you know the the political systems that we we have is kind of a good answer to the so what question because when I'm reading oh China is going to become dominant like who cares? So why? Like but it's a it's a good point about it impacting politics and our cultural values. Um, yeah. Uh, anyway, sorry, I blanked on what I was

15:30 going to say next, so go on. Well, I mean, I think my fear if of China quote winning. Um, let's say that they become the dominant automaker because they've just got so much more capable AIdriven cars or not necessarily AI driven, but they've got the perception rendering in there that makes them so much better. If that puts out a business so many of the automakers, then my job which is documenting APIs for cars like map-based APIs might uh go away because like uh there's no audience for our product, right? It's like all based in China or something. Um so it would have like a real impact economically in a lot of

16:15 sectors that I think would would affect us. Um, yeah, that the the author really doesn't really doesn't want to characterize it as like a race as as Remy pointed out where somebody wins because uh yeah, the author turns like I don't know about the the conclusion and his solution to this with the whole like um social investment stipend theory or idea and even UBI and so on as as a solution like we can't just be competing economically against each other. We have to sort of move towards this humanitarian um socialist looking society. I just didn't really buy that. I don't know. Uh what did you think about that that sort

17:01 of conclusion the author makes which he comes to after having a real health scare with cancer and so on? Did you did you find that compelling or did it seem naive and idealistic? It's it's hard to imagine companies all agreeing to kind of transform the way that they create value. And I it I liked the idea. It sounded great, but it's hard for me one to imagine us all agreeing to collaborate and cooperate with each other. And it's also hard for me to imagine like I feel like something could go wrong in that setup where maybe the government decides that these values are important and really forces people to

17:47 prioritize sort of fringe beliefs that the government is pushing forward and creates sort of a a new sort of dystopia. Like I feel like there there could be a a way that this could definitely go wrong. Um, I don't have any better ideas, but I liked it, but I've also felt like I don't I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I I I really can't see myself as um doing some kind of like care profession where I go and like help the elderly and something like I just it's not it's not what I what I sort of do. I can't imagine doing that. But maybe there is some role that that we could play. But yeah, I can see your point about how this could easily become its own dystopia with government uh telling

18:33 people what to do and people revoling and I don't know forming splinter societies and everything fragmenting. Remy, what did you think more about the the author's um social investment stipend uh solution? I mean personally I really like the idea. I I think there are cons, you know, lots of questions and implications about the execution, but I I like the idea actually over UBI. Um, as someone who has, so I work in nonprofits. Um, I'm I've always been very kind of social impact minded. So it was very appealing idea to me just to think about like incentivizing supporting each other and community engagement whereas I think our current system kind of incentivizes

19:18 not that um like profit turning a profit at any expense unfortunately um often at the expense of other people. So I I don't think it's a bad idea even regardless of the timelines of AI and automation I think it's a it's actually a good idea to entertain I do think that you know there is a really big question I mean to Molly's point about how this could go dystopian I mean you know obviously anything could right but the question of who decides what is covered by a social impact stipen has really big implications right like what qualifies so to speak and who decides also within organizations and between organizations what kinds of work really need a human

20:04 in the loop right because there are going to be entrepreneurs always who are saying well we could automate that we could AIify that right and so I'm I mean you know you could say maybe this is where some kind of regulation comes in maybe it's just sort of social regulation or it's government regulation but I do think at a certain point it becomes hard to control or that and that's only within a country that's not even talking between countries right like then you bring in international competition and If the US theoretically got to some kumbaya harmonious state where we were all like helping each other and getting social impact stipens and then China is not doing that, what does that mean for the state of the global economy and and productivity and

20:50 competition? So, I mean, I I really like the ethos of it, and I think it's a really good I I actually think it's a good thing to push for even in our current society, like to walk towards something that incentivizes um cooperation and social participation. I also think to your point, Tom, like there are a lot of people out there who probably right now cannot imagine themselves, you know, not doing the kind of work they've chosen. I also see that as a product of like the culture in many many generations of our culture in some ways like we have learned to associate our identity so tightly with the work we do and if we made some shift to prioritizing the kinds of work he's

21:36 talking about being covered by the social impact social investment sten maybe two or three generations from now there's really not a misalignment like people do find purpose and productivity in that kind of work and and meaningful connection. But I I get how the transition would be rough because a lot of people are not there yet and I'm not there yet. You know, it would be like a a big sea change basically. It would have to happen over time. So, it would need to be kind of an intentional policy choice that I think would bear out over time, but it would leave some people behind in the process. It's cool that you are involved in nonprofits because you definitely bring a good perspective uh to this discussion. Um, for sure like and I I totally understand that like so many of our identities are wrapped up in our

22:22 current work and it's hard to see ourselves doing any other path and so on. Um, uh, and it doesn't have to be that way. As you say, it it may just take time to re reset and so on. Um, let's jump more into this this um idea, not so much the social investment, but the the reason why uh Lee even talks about this social investment in UBI. He predicts that 40 to 50% of um people might lose their jobs and because of this there's going to be massive social unrest. He thinks this is the main threat uh more than anything else. He's not he's not really aligned with the idea that AI is going

23:08 to uh subjugate humans and you know annihilate us. He thinks that it's going to be the social impact of mass unemployment and disruption and change to the labor force and so on that will create different uh like almost working cast classes. Um uh and just a lot of people not sure what to do. We already saw in the last election there's a lot of people who feel well a lot of the the people who voted more conservatively and in places where like their economy is languishing uh wanted to bring back manufacturing or do something right they they they felt left behind and so on this in this world that was I don't know moving forward

23:55 and uh that created a lot of political division and so on. So this idea that massive changes to our to our workforce would create a lot of social unrest is pretty compelling. Um do you do you agree? I mean this book was written in 2018 which surprisingly like still feels very relevant even though so much I mean this is before chat GPT has even come out. It's it's hard to believe. Uh but do you think do you agree with the idea that in 2030 for example or 2035 we'll see 40 to 50% unemployment? Um or is that a premise that you're still kind of unsure about like I don't

24:40 know this AI thing might just be over overblown people are overestimating what it's going to do. I'm kind of I'm kind of split. I'm not entirely persuaded because I mean I I use I try to use AI as much as possible in my job, but right now I I can only feel it like giving me a I don't know 30% 40% lift and so on that still needs a lot of human steering and direction and so on. So the idea that entire jobs would just be automated seems to me very uh dreamy um and very optimistic. But um I don't know any thoughts on massive unemployment to come

25:26 and what to do. Um just okay like I gave you full disclosure. I I skimmed over the second half of the book. It's okay. Um I was just thinking about that. Um like you Tom, you yourself said that you can't imagine yourself working with the elderly. I I I'm in I'm a technical writer as you all probably are and but I also am a caregiver to my mother and I have to manage her caregivers. So, I see, you know, you know, firsthand people working with the elderly and and my daughter is is in college right

26:12 now or she just finished an associates degree and she's looking into going into health care. I don't like the book talks about the social whatever whatever he calls the SBI um the social incentivized to do social jobs. I I'm thinking that the market itself like the new generation of workers are seeing that are looking at their future and seeing which jobs are not um are AI low risk for AI automation and I think the new generation will just veer toward those jobs

26:58 as a market driven thing versus as a as a government incentivized thing. Mhm. Do you do you feel like your sorry do you feel like your daughter was thinking about AI when she chose you said she went into healthcare? Like was it on her mind? No, because of my experience in technology and AI. I she I made her aware of that and that just helped push her more towards uh a caring position, a healthc care position, you know. So that those are my that's my thoughts as your I mean I feel like he took a really nuanced I I appreciated his discussion

27:44 about the unemployment thing because I I thought he took a nuanced approach which was you can't necessarily talk about entire jobs being automated but tasks being automated and even if you could theoretically like I think I think the projection he ends up with is like 38% based on the way we normally consider and things, but then there's an extra 10% if you add in some of the um kinds of work that are not considered in the other studies. So, it's maybe 40 to 50% of jobs that could be like parts of which could be automated, but it's true that all jobs are in like are partially tasks that might be automatable and partially tasks that can't, which are like the human connection piece. And he also talks about like you know um the

28:33 downward pressure on industries like if people do you know to Florence's point if people do flood into industries that are that seem less AI vulnerable there'll be a lot of pressure on those industries and the salaries and like it's going to there's you know there will be disruption no matter what basically I do think that I mean the other nuance that he adds is like there will be social and economic pressures that don't cause it to happen all at once and may even draw it out on a much longer scale. So I I I I feel like it's true because you know there are a lot of people in industries that will just not adapt on even on the timeline that you know entre entrepreneurs want to see disruption happen and we also haven't

29:20 answered and I think it will take a long time to answer some of these social philosophical questions about what we do with that displacement basically. So I think all of that is going to you know lead to some degree of disruption in most fields and also a lot of like very drawn out negotiation about what actually ends up happening to those jobs and I think it'll more likely be like the task centered approach where like pieces of jobs get automated and the question is are there enough pieces of your job that are automatable theoretically that we could wipe it out alto together like JP Morgan Chase laid off 10% of their workforce in favor of automation and Microsoft laid off 8% of their operations global operations workforce in favor of automation. Right?

30:07 So those jobs are definitely at risk at least for big tech companies. I think the question is all of like his his end his upshot at the end is like there are jobs at the top and at the bottom that are safe, but then the messy middle like the middle class bedrock is actually most at risk because a lot of those pieces might be automatable. So I I don't know what's going to happen, but I think it's true that it's going to be really messy and it's probably not going to happen all at once and it's probably going to cause a lot of upheaval. Remy, can I ask um what is your profession? Are you a tech writer? Are you a product manager or something totally different? Something totally different. I am uh I'm so I work at a nonprofit um

30:52 called Compass Proono in Washington DC. We do um proono consulting and board matching for other nonprofits for local nonprofits in all kinds of issue areas, homelessness, healthcare, environment, sustainability. Um I've been there four years. I was kind of in a strategy role before. Now I'm director of AI and thought leadership. So a lot of my day-to-day work is um I actually consult for nonprofits on responsible AI integration and how to do it in a ways like I I led that in my organization over the last two years. Um so I've created kind of a framework. I teach other nonprofits about it. I speak at conferences about it. Um and then the thought leadership piece is like turning our 25 years of institutional knowledge into education for other organizations. So that's kind of my my dayto-day. So I I'm fascinated by AI on a personal level

31:39 and I play with it all the time, but I also have like thought a lot about it on an organizational level, institutional level, and I have pretty lofty dreams about how it could change our sector and our culture, but uh you know, I know there's a lot in the way of that. So cool. Well, we're glad to have you here. Yeah. I mean, just to give you a little more background, um I'm a technical writer. Uh I work at at a big tech company. I'm in Seattle and I think a lot of the like the book club is open to anybody really any roles. It's just my sphere of influence online is mostly around tech writers. So that's usually who I who who gets the word. But I'm excited that you're you're here because you do have a lot of knowledge and and it's apparent that you've got you've

32:24 you've thought deeply about this topic. So that's great. um this this idea oh that that you were talking about and others were talking about um hits any role. This idea that we have to figure out what uh profession will be safe from AI and and those professions are basically what AI is weak at the social emotional connection and so on. uh which in tech writing I don't think it exists like maybe have empathy for the user but eh you know it's nothing compared to what I don't know other roles might have um do you see

33:09 you advise different companies on a lot of different AI AI things um how would you how do you like what would you say to technical writers who are trying to evolve their role and try to evolve it in a way that's going to be safe from AI that's going to land in one of these human sweet spots that AI can't really easily automate. Well, I would first be really interested in understanding a little more of what your tech what technical writing actually looks like dayto-day because I don't actually know at all. I mean, it's like uh user guides for for technology products, APIs for example that developers use integrating. I mentioned I do like uh documentation for APIs in cars. So you you get in your car, let's say it's a new car, it's got

33:55 Google Maps in there. It's like, well, how's it getting all that map data? APIs are pulling it in. Somebody has to figure out how they integrate it. That kind of thing. And I'm sure everybody has similar similar uh rules. And Florence and Molly, you guys are in that space, too. Okay. Super interesting. Yeah. No, I'm I'm I'm I'm really glad to be in conversation because I, you know, I mostly talk with nonprofit folks, so it's it's great to hear some other um perspectives. I mean, you know, I I sort of think that the philosophical question that he talks about, he invokes a couple of times, which is um you know, in a world where AI can do much of what humans can do, what does it mean to be human? I think it's a really important one to kind of meditate on on a very personal and

34:42 organization specific level like what are the things that we need to thrive and do our work and and connect in meaningful ways. you know, for my work, um, and the work that my colleagues do, you know, I actually feel and and a lot of the work that nonprofits in our sphere do, I feel like it's pretty buffered because there's a lot of human to human connection. There are a lot of ways they can use AI that they're not yet, which is why I go and consult for organizations that are thinking about it. Um, but I kind of see this as an opportunity to redefine our relationship with the work that we do. And you know, maybe that's easy for me to say because I don't have a job that feels directly very

35:29 automatable. So I there's like a bias there. But um what I would be interested in understanding is like when you guys think about your work and also the sphere of work around you and like the kinds of things that constitute the building blocks of the end product like are there you know if you feel like 60 plus% of your work could theoretically be automated in the next few years like is there a chunk of your work that still gives you excitement and meaning and value that you feel is in the other category which is like the connection. I mean it sounds like Tom you're saying maybe not because it's just like empathy for the end user but like for me the opportunity is like well

36:15 maybe there are now you know there's like a role you play in even if it's not the social emotional side maybe it's like managing the AI and the algorithms and the things that kind of power that work right like in the same way that spreadsheets and calculators fundamentally changed how we did math and data analysis like we didn't all suddenly become, you know, like useless because of that. We just ended up managing the systems that managed the data, right? Not that there was no displacement, but I I think that's a more reasonable uh forecast of the techcom role. Uh becoming a manager of the systems and the data. Here's how I I envision my job will work within a year's time. I will set up some kind of

37:03 jobs overnight to start tackling different doc ts tasks. I show up in the morning and I review the content that ai has written and I maybe make changes maybe not just manually just as a director saying hey uh add some more detail here you know you forgot this part here and make sure you single source it over there or something. Uh, but I feel like I'm going to have a list of stuff to review and my job won't really involve writing, but more just like steering uh what agents tackle, what priorities they do. I don't know. Uh, more of like a manager of AI, not manager of people, manager of the AI outputs.

37:50 Um, but also also like there's a tremendous need and this is a this is the nut. nobody can really seem to crack is there's a tremendous need for these AI systems to be smarter and more intelligent. Uh when people type in something, do they get the right answer? For example, in my scenario, let's say you want to build a mapping application. You're a developer and you you have your your coding environment and you just type out in natural English, hey, I want to embed a map here that has 3D zooms over the Eiffel Tower. You don't want to code any of it. Well, what are the chances that the AI agent can successfully

38:37 successfully perform all of that, right? How do we make sure that these AI agents are capable? They have to get the right information. We have to identify the gaps. We have to make sure that they're uh uh successful and so on. And being able to plug that gap and make sure they don't hallucinate or they don't have errors seems like a huge um role in the future as well for tech writers. I still don't see I still don't see the the social emotional part of of our job. I mean I'm still it could just be me but um Molly Florence, what do you think of that? Do you do you do you think your job will look like what I just described or will it look totally different?

39:23 Um uh I I agree with what you described um of managing the AI outputs and making you know plugging the gaps um being less of like writer but more like an editor, you know. Um yeah, so I I completely agree with that. And also I I was mentioning how I met Tom at the Write the Docs conference in Portland and I spoke with other people and they also, you know, echoed what you just said about plugging like preventing the AI from hallucinating, plugging the gaps where like plugging the gaps of the AI's

40:10 knowledge. That's that's what I see what my job will be in the future. I I agree. I already find myself um managing it like where it's we have it on our um on our knowledge base and we also have it in the app now so that it uses the docs that I wrote to answer every customer's question and when I find it saying something that's absolutely wrong then I have to go find whatever article it's using or try to figure out how to tweak our docs just so that it gives the right answer. There's a lot of that that I'm doing now that I hadn't been doing before. I feel like that'll become a bigger part of my role. Um, yeah. So, like definitely managing AI

40:55 will become important, but I have another part of my writing where I feel like I I still want to do a lot of the writing, the initial writing myself. And I feel like that's not going to that's not going to work well when people expect you to adopt AI more because I feel like if I want to connect to the topic and understand it, I need to I need to write about it. I need to I need to write about it myself before I get AI involved. Like a lot of times I'll get feedback on drafts, but I feel like my my unwillingness to let go of writing out drafts is going to work against me in the future. I think sorry I I just I almost disagree

41:41 Molly in in the sense I do think there'll be pressure but I also think that like the taste like where I'm worried about people who are just entering the workforce because I think the ability to develop expertise and taste happens over time and that's going to be a real skill set when you become like an editor or modifier of AI outputs like you need to have that deep understanding in order to say this is a good or bad output but if you never get the chance to build that and and I don't know what will happen with new generations entering the workforce but for people who are currently in the workforce like whatever your system is for developing taste and like an ability to look at an output and say this is good or bad like that comes with lots of experience and whatever process it takes

42:26 you right so I mean I agree there'll be pressure but I almost think that you know in certain ways it's safer to be someone who doesn't use AI at every part in the process, but still has the taste to be able to qu like critically judge the outputs of the AI and then, you know, steer them in the right direction versus someone who hasn't even entered the workforce and had the ability to develop the taste that's needed to assess. Like if you've only ever written essays with chat GPT, you probably don't know what non-ChinesBT writing feels a little bit off because you just haven't seen and created that much writing that's been critiqued in the way that you know now I look at you know I go on LinkedIn I see a bunch of

43:11 chatbt captions I can recognize the patterns because I've used LLM but also because I developed taste for good writing. So I would imagine the same thing is going to apply in a lot of professions. I I definitely agree that like without expertise um using the AI tools is going to be very difficult, right? You got to be able to know when it's off and be able to steer it and and if you're just drawing a blank, it doesn't work. I I found this to be especially true with code samples. I'm not an engineer. So if I use AI to write a code sample, I can kind of see what's going on, but I don't have the engineering expertise to really thoroughly know if it's good or bad or even works uh without sinking a lot of

43:57 time. So I just kind of don't even try that. I just tell engineers to produce the code for for whatever we need. Um, but yeah, that the expertise is is critical and if the only way you get expertise is by going through some of the writing more manually, that seems valid. Um, I did want to push back a little bit on an assertion I was making earlier that there was uh no social emotional component to the tech writing role, which might be overstated because I do think that writing itself um perhaps more the personal creative writing does have a tremendous social emotional component. If I write a blog post on my my site for example, um if I if I have just AI write it,

44:44 there's there's very little meaning behind it and I don't learn from it. I really use writing as a way to think through something as well as to respond to other what other people are writing like it's very much a social interactive space and it it requires me to process ideas as well, right? The emotional impact of of ideas. So writing itself is this weird paradox where like on the creative side is very social emotional. It can't I don't see it being easily automated. Nobody likes AI slop. But in the workspace with tech docs that are meant to be more Wikipedia like factual not really a persona or voice or creativity there doesn't seem to require that same degree of social emotional

45:29 emotional commitment or investment at least for the work I do. So interesting. Um it's a good point. Let's see. You know, uh there's one. Okay, let's let's hit this topic that Dan proposed. Dan or Dan who couldn't be here. I had a couple of people email me and say, "Hey, I really like the book. I just couldn't be here. I mean, due to this time." One of those people is Dan and he said he wanted to better understand uh like current events with China especially in terms of the Nvidia deal where the government gets 15% of all the chip sales to China as a kickback to the government. Um how does that fit into

46:18 like the framework that Kyu Lee is talking about? Um like we're reading this whole book on China. Certainly that provides some kind of lens by which we can interpret current events with China based AI policies and um I was scratching my head on this one and so I plugged some resources into Notebook LM and asked it this question and I'm kind of curious to see what you all think of this but basically Notebook LM said okay the idea is that uh by not selling the most advanced chips to China, the US maintains its dominance in the age of discovery or in the discovery sort of um aspect of AI.

47:04 Uh but it's sort of conceding that the implementation aspect um can be uh uh dominated by China or other people like the author separates out this age of discovery versus age of implementation. The author's argument is that we've kind of passed the age of discovery. We're now in implementation. Ironically, this is before before chat GPT had come out, at least in a mainstream way in 2018. So, I'm not sure if like that was shortsighted, but this idea that there's discovery and implementation, and if you want to dominate discovery, you need the most advanced AI chips and the US is going to hold on to that and be try to compete there. But like we'll still sell the chips and let other people implement

47:51 AI. I don't know. What do you have any thoughts on how to interpret current strategies US has if you can even call them strategies with China uh around AI? Is there is there any kind of like um enlightened viewpoint that we get from Kyu Lee on current events or is it just like unrelated really? Yeah, I I sort of feel the same way. Like I feel as if I should have more insights on this when I don't really. But I don't know enough about this. Yeah, I was surprised by I was really surprised by the deal, the 15% deal

48:38 because I mean I guess not surprised. Well, it was unprecedented to have a deal like this, right, with a private company for the government. But I do think it's a really hard question like what do you do about chips? Because there's some benefit to the US economy if we sell to China and there's some risk if we let China, you know, develop their own chips and then like there's some competitive risk, so to speak. And even though the Chinese government has been pressuring companies to like domestic companies to use Chinese chipmakers chips, they have still all preferred the Nvidia chips so far. So I mean I think it's a really interesting

49:23 question. I think the, you know, part of my interpretation of Kaioulu's argument is that we're rapidly moving away from the age of discovery. And I think part of that might be like I mean and it was 2018 also, right? But like if we didn't sell Nvidia chips to China at all, it might just be a matter of time until Huawei and Quen chips are just as good and favored, right, in Chinese companies. So, you know, I see the advantage to the US economy from doing that. the 15% cut is really interesting. I guess the lingering question for me is what is the actual

50:10 long-term implication of like the cultural political war so to speak between the US and China of doing this because this maintains some degree of influence. I mean I think the good thing about it in some sense is that if China owns manufacturing in a very significant way but the US owns chipm in a very significant way then China doesn't have the only upper hand in the third and fourth phases of AI implementation. We could say, "Hey, we're going to not sell you our Nvidia chips anymore if you don't help us manufacture like the next wave of AI native mobile tech tools or whatever it is, hardware, you know, perception AI hardware." I don't know. That's a

50:56 drastic oversimplification obviously and China could very easily say, "Well, now we we've studied your chips and we have the tech so we don't need it, you know." But that that's my like high level thought about it. Like I do think it's good to have some leverage. I don't know if this goes, you know, if this is enough to h actually have like a hand on the scale when it comes to the manufacturing side, but it's something. So I can see some benefit to doing this at least for the US economy and cultural dominance. It is such an interesting question because there's no there's no like easy answer. If you if you don't sell chips to China, you encourage their own independence and effort to build them locally, right? And if you do sell chips to China, then you probably uh I don't

51:42 know, like not sure that it's going to really change a whole lot. They they see the US as kind of unreliable and are constantly changing tariffs and other policies. They already want independence. Not sure that we're going to just like get them used to our tech stack and then they stop innovating uh locally. it seems so so many unknowns but but if there's one thing that seems clear is like China is a major a major uh component of any kind of AI strategy and and the fact that like they're so competitive means that the US is trying to get involved and even though this weird 15% deal seems very like corrupt and and uh like the government sticking its hand into business and so on in

52:27 weird ways Maybe it'll it will incentivize the government to get more involved in AI if it sees like more returns on it and that involvement could spur more AI support and development in the same way that the Chinese government got involved and pushed AI uh because it saw that it could return massive benefits as well. I don't know. I'm not uh I'm not a like super uh steeped in politics, so I don't really have an informed opinion about about this, but it is a a question Dan brought up and you know, worth looking at in this in light of this book. Um you know, last there's one other theme I wanted to to bring up that I couldn't

53:13 quite um understand very well. Uh and Florence, you brought this up at the at the start. You said it was interesting to see the depiction of the kind of Chinese company mentality, the gladiator mentality, the way that they uh integrate from the ground up in all aspects that uh they're kind of they're not beholden to some lofty mission. They're very focused on what turns profit and so on. What I don't understand is why there aren't more like China based techw writing firms that will easily just take any kind of documentation project, turn it around in a fraction of the price, use AI models to clean up any kind of language uh frictions and issues and

54:01 just like put all tech writers out of business. Uh that the whole outsourcing idea initially surfaced probably a dozen years ago. people thought got real scared but then it didn't really happen. Uh people tried to offshore a lot of tech talk projects and didn't work so well so pulled back. But uh why couldn't these I feel like the way that the way the author described the Chinese work ethic and mentality and the the gladiator sort of like do do whatever it takes, work around the clock, push full full throttle. Um, why isn't that just like putting tech writers out of out of business here in the US? I I feel like it could happen eventually, but maybe there's just other

54:49 applications of AI where they can make a lot more money and there just isn't enough money to be made by replacing tech writers. Like I mean in startups like I'm I'm the first tech writer at my company and like you know I think a lot of companies get them later than they should because they don't prioritize it. And you know I just feel like maybe there just isn't enough money to make be made yet to be bothered with it. But when they figure out the way to do it really cheaply then sure they'll just like just blow us all out of the water and then we'll all be out of a job. or one of you can create that app first, right? Yeah. I mean I will say I I you know part of what I do part of the consulting I do I

55:37 mean a very significant lens is like change management for organizations on AI and I try to prioritize like responsible AI change management which means like human centric and values aligned AI adoption and I think for any prediction of like mass industry or job disruption or workforce disruption and change management is going to be a big bottleneck because when I look out I mean maybe for not as much for the next two generations of founders who are AI native just in the same way that like technative startup founders were just using the internet from the jump right but like you know the gen Z gen alpha and beyond kids who go into the

56:22 workforce and then start to found their own companies which is already happening like AI is just there right and they may already be automating things and not it's not like replacing someone. It's just start like starting from there, right? I think that's going to be more and more common. But I think for the vast majority of organizations in this country that employ and contract people for their work, there's a really significant hill to overcome, which is just like it's basically just like the bias of having done something a certain way forever. And I think we underestimate the extent to which that's going to slow AI adoption. Like there's going to be a lot of disruption when the next generation of founders comes along, but they're not going to be in the seauite of these of most companies for many years now,

57:10 right? And you know, we'll have maybe like the gerontocracy of like seuite uh you know, organizational leadership over the next 10 or 15 years. And a lot of those organizations and people are just not going to make the shift as quickly as I think we assume because it's really hard like my the part of the framework that I offer is like so that you don't have backsliding. I think a lot of organizations are saying you know like um Dolingo and Clara are two like tech startups that laid off a bunch of workers and said oh we're going to just automate their their jobs and then had to rehire almost all of them or other people to replace them because they weren't actually in the position to do that. Now maybe two years from now they'll be able to do that but I think

57:55 there's going to be more like lag and difficulty for a lot of reasons including what you were talking about earlier Tom which is like assessing the actual output of the AI like it's not going to be perfect. So I think there'll be more lag than people expect in a lot of ways in part just because we're used to not working with it. So that's why I I have some like skepticism around any claim that in the next few years, especially entire industries are going to be completely wiped out. I do think there are obviously going to be really significant consequences in some industries. Like we're already seeing mass layoffs by big tech companies that have the infrastructure to do that on a mass scale and there's still going to be prestigious and still going to be able to attract the best talent no matter what because they have so much money. But I don't think that's going to be the

58:41 case for most businesses in this country. I think it's going to be a much slower role. I can see how uh your job in your role in change management is probably a pretty pretty hot uh field right now. There's a lot of that seems like a very difficult transition for companies to make and I I in many ways I'm very glad that companies are slow to change, right? If they could just pivot overnight to some drastic new model that wiped out half their workforce and they didn't feel the pain, that would be pretty that would be uh scary. So, yeah. Well, hey, um this has been a great discussion. I appreciated your insights into uh this book. I'm glad we we read it. Um plug the next book in the list. Okay,

59:28 it's going to be backwards, but Empire of AI by Karen How. This is a recent book. Uh, it's kind of similar to the AI supremacy book we recently read by Parmmy Olsen, but it's a little bit more anti-AI. I shouldn't say anti-A. It's very, uh, rigorous. It's a little more critical. Uh, it's quite a thick book. I listened to half of it on the audio book so far and I was just like, we've got to read this one. This is a must readad. Um it just goes in depth in so many different areas. And really the title Empire of AI suggests like uh colonization and and conquest of AI companies over so many different facets of life. It is a good book even though I mean I'm a AI

1:00:15 optimist but this is one we we definitely should read. So um I will send a little note about that and and hope to see you at the next one. And also I these book clubs are recorded and uh if for some reason you don't want me to share the recording on my site, let me know. But uh hopefully you know um you're okay with that and really appreciate uh just your your um participation and just your forthcoming uh uh thoughts and reactions on this book. So thanks again. Any last thoughts that anybody wants to say before we close up? Okay, nice to meet you all. Really appreciate the the conversation. Looking forward to more. Thanks for coming. Yeah. Bye. Take care.