A comparison between two works on Artificial Intelligence

Understanding AI by Nicolas Sauburet (2019)

AI 2041 by Kai-Fu Lee & Chen Qiufan (2020)

Nicolas Sauburet’s Understanding AI (2019) tried to make sense of “intelligent machines” at a time when most people were still guessing what that meant.

He talked about the computational complexity of real-world problems, that some might remain beyond the reach of even the fastest computers.

He was spot on about one thing: AI would need massive processing power.

What he probably didn’t imagine was that this power would later be shared, distributed, and aggregated across millions of devices and data centers, unlocking what we see today.

He also made an interesting distinction between intelligence and consciousness, believing machines might reason, but never truly feel.

He wasn’t dystopian like Hawking or Musk but just cautious and realistic, standing right at the edge of a transformation he couldn’t fully quantify.

@Kai-Fu Lee, in AI Superpowers (2018) and later AI 2041 (2020), offered a very balanced perspective.

He saw AI’s strength in recognizing patterns and relationships, but also its limits in nuance, abstraction, and human commonsense.

He wrote about CNNs, GANs, and mixed reality, the ideas that were cutting-edge then and feel familiar now.

But even someone as forward-looking as Kai-Fu Lee, one of the most perceptive voices in AI, couldn’t have predicted just how fast things would unfold.

Looking back, both authors were right in their own way.

They captured what AI could become,

but maybe not how fast we’d all start living it.

The launch of ChatGPT on 30 November 2022 probably marks that turning point when AI stopped being an abstract concept and became something everyone could experience firsthand.

We didn’t just step into the AI revolution.

We realized it had already been unfolding beneath our feet.

Curious to know — which author do you think came closer to understanding AI’s real trajectory — the realist Nicolas Sauburet, or the futurist @Kai-Fu Lee?