When he decided to write a book about how AI will change our lives within the next two decades, computer scientist and AI investor Kai-Fu Lee decided to show instead of just tell.

He teamed up with science fiction writer Chen Quifan to produce AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future. AI 2041 tells ten stories of human beings in various countries dealing with life using AI, and life shaped by AI, in the year 2041.

A teenage girl in India whose AI helps her family save money but also thwarts her efforts to connect with a boy from a marginalized social class. A man in Nigeria who is manipulated into creating deepfake video content to serve a political agenda. A nosophobic woman in China who lives, and loves, entirely virtually.

Lee introduces each story by highlighting the possibilities and questions it raises, and concludes after each story by describing the AI used in the story and the current iterations of those technologies. Some of those technologies already existed in 2021; others were predictable based on then-current state of technology.

The stories feel like devices, which they are, but I’m deeply grateful for this book and its approach. It bridges the gap between the two types of popular writing about AI right now: analytical descriptions of the technology and its potentials and risks on the one hand, and nonspecific, often handwringing debates about its existential signficance on the other.

I find both these types of writing useful, but what I need more than anything right now is what Lee and Chen have created: a glimpse for the non-specialist into the predictable near future with AI.