How will artificial intelligence change our world within twenty years?

AI will be the defining development of the twenty-first century. Within two decades, aspects of daily human life will be unrecognizable. AI will generate unprecedented wealth, revolutionize medicine and education through human-machine symbiosis, and create brand new forms of communication and entertainment. However, AI will also challenge the organizing principles of our economic and social order and bring new risks in the form of autonomous weapons and smart technology that inherits human bias. AI is at a tipping point, and people need to wake up-both to AI's radiant pathways and its existential perils for life as we know it.

In this provocative, utterly original work of "scientific fiction," Kai-Fu Lee, the former president of Google China and bestselling author of AI Superpowers, joins forces with celebrated novelist Chen Qiufan to imagine our AI world in 2041 in ten gripping short stories.

Gazing toward a not-so-distant horizon, AI 2041 offers urgent insights into our collective future and reminds us that we are the authors of our own destiny.

Speech Recognition has a long history of being one of the difficult problems in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science. As one goes from problem solving tasks such as puzzles and chess to perceptual tasks such as speech and vision, the problem characteristics change dramatically: knowledge poor to knowledge rich; low data rates to high data rates; slow response time (minutes to hours) to instantaneous response time. These characteristics taken together increase the computational complexity of the problem by several orders of magnitude. Further, speech provides a challenging task domain which embodies many of the requirements of intelligent behavior: operate in real time; exploit vast amounts of knowledge, tolerate errorful, unexpected unknown input; use symbols and abstractions; communicate in natural language and learn from the environment. Voice input to computers offers a number of advantages. It provides a natural, fast, hands free, eyes free, location free input medium. However, there are many as yet unsolved problems that prevent routine use of speech as an input device by non-experts. These include cost, real time response, speaker independence, robustness to variations such as noise, microphone, speech rate and loudness, and the ability to handle non-grammatical speech. Satisfactory solutions to each of these problems can be expected within the next decade. Recognition of unrestricted spontaneous continuous speech appears unsolvable at present. However, by the addition of simple constraints, such as clarification dialog to resolve ambiguity, we believe it will be possible to develop systems capable of accepting very large vocabulary continuous speechdictation.

A WALL STREET JOURNAL, WASHINGTON POST, AND FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR In this ground-breaking blend of imaginative storytelling and scientific forecasting, a pioneering AI expert and a leading writer of speculative fiction join forces to answer an imperative question: How will artificial intelligence change our world within twenty years? AI will be the defining development of the twenty-first century. Within two decades, aspects of daily human life will be unrecognizable. AI will generate unprecedented wealth, revolutionize medicine and education through human-machine symbiosis, and create brand new forms of communication and entertainment. In liberating us from routine work, however, AI will also challenge the organizing principles of our economic and social order. Meanwhile, AI will bring new risks in the form of autonomous weapons and smart technology that inherits human bias. AI is at a tipping point, and people need to wake up-both to AI's radiant pathways and its existential perils for life as we know it. In this provocative, utterly original work of "scientific fiction," Kai-Fu Lee, the former president of Google China and bestselling author of AI Superpowers, joins forces with celebrated novelist Chen Qiufan to imagine our world in 2041 and how it will be shaped by AI. In ten gripping short stories, set twenty years in the future, they introduce readers to an array of eye-opening 2041 settings: In San Francisco, a new industry, "job reallocation," arises to serve displaced workers In Tokyo, a music fan is swept up in an immersive form of celebrity worship In Mumbai, a teenage girl rebels when AI gets in the way of romance In Seoul, virtual teachers offer orphaned twins new ways to learn and connect In Munich, a rogue quantum computer scientist's revenge plot imperils the world By gazing toward a not-so-distant horizon, AI 2041 offers urgent insights into our collective future-while reminding readers that, ultimately, humankind remains the author of its destiny.

Speech Recognition has a long history of being one of the difficult problems in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science. As one goes from problem solving tasks such as puzzles and chess to perceptual tasks such as speech and vision, the problem characteristics change dramatically: knowledge poor to knowledge rich; low data rates to high data rates; slow response time (minutes to hours) to instantaneous response time. These characteristics taken together increase the computational complexity of the problem by several orders of magnitude. Further, speech provides a challenging task domain which embodies many of the requirements of intelligent behavior: operate in real time; exploit vast amounts of knowledge, tolerate errorful, unexpected unknown input; use symbols and abstractions; communicate in natural language and learn from the environment. Voice input to computers offers a number of advantages. It provides a natural, fast, hands free, eyes free, location free input medium. However, there are many as yet unsolved problems that prevent routine use of speech as an input device by non-experts. These include cost, real time response, speaker independence, robustness to variations such as noise, microphone, speech rate and loudness, and the ability to handle non-grammatical speech. Satisfactory solutions to each of these problems can be expected within the next decade. Recognition of unrestricted spontaneous continuous speech appears unsolvable at present. However, by the addition of simple constraints, such as clarification dialog to resolve ambiguity, we believe it will be possible to develop systems capable of accepting very large vocabulary continuous speechdictation.

THE NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY, AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER "Kai-Fu Lee believes China will be the next tech-innovation superpower and in AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, he explains why. Taiwan-born Lee is perfectly positioned for the task."-New York Magazine In this thought-provoking book, Lee argues powerfully that because of the unprecedented developments in AI, dramatic changes will be happening much sooner than many of us expected. Indeed, as the US-Sino AI competition begins to heat up, Lee urges the US and China to both accept and to embrace the great responsibilities that come with significant technological power. Most experts already say that AI will have a devastating impact on blue-collar jobs. But Lee predicts that Chinese and American AI will have a strong impact on white-collar jobs as well. Is universal basic income the solution? In Lee's opinion, probably not. But he provides a clear description of which jobs will be affected and how soon, which jobs can be enhanced with AI, and most importantly, how we can provide solutions to some of the most profound changes in the future of human history.

After more than two decades of research activity, speech recognition has begun to live up to its promise as a practical technology and interest in the field is growing dramatically. "Readings in Speech Recognition" provides a collection of seminal papers that have influenced or redirected the field and that illustrate the central insights that have emerged over the years.

The editors provide an introduction to the field, its concerns and research problems. Subsequent chapters are devoted to the main schools of thought and design philosophies that have motivated different approaches to speech recognition system design. Each chapter includes an introduction to the papers that highlights the major insights or needs that have motivated an approach to a problem and describes the commonalities and differences of that approach to others in the book.