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It’s easy, in the United States, to talk about China as a monolith. But the reality couldn’t be further from the truth. As in the West, Chinese society is divided by inequality, geography, gender, and generation — after all, China is home to more than one billion people. As we seek to understand China’s role in the 21st century, we do well to consider where change is comin...
For the last twenty years, technology has been the most powerful force of globalization, but it now appears that the next decades will be defined by how the world splinters into different tech camps—changes driven by societal values, human rights, and nationalistic interests. Advanced technologies—from 5G to semiconductors to quantum computing—are the new currency of power...
A clean energy revolution is underway here, and across the globe. And it’s high time, considering electricity and heat are responsible for a staggering one-third of global emissions. Coal plants are shutting down, the costs of solar and wind technologies are rapidly falling, and a recent bipartisan bill looks to reestablish the United States as a leader in nuclear energy....
Kai-Fu Lee, a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, gives AI a B- for its performance during the pandemic. It’s far from perfect, he says, but gets a solid pass for its contributions to contact tracing and containment in China, where Lee lives and works. Importantly, he says, advances in artificial intelligence give us plenty of reasons to believe that the next...
The Internet, to date, has been an open system that has enabled ideas to spread across borders, has created transformative new economies, and has helped people connect, create, and distribute information, exposing us to perspectives that were previously out-of-reach. But it’s also left behind those on the wrong side of the digital divide, and raised thorny new questions a...
How can we break the Islamic State’s brand? How far does Putin’s media machine reach? How will China grapple with Twitter? In an era where nearly any data point is at our fingertips, it’s increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction. The result is an overcrowded information space primed for a hostile takeover. The digital battlefield involves thousands of voices, e...
Robert Mueller made clear the bottom line of his investigation: Russia attacked our democracy — and, as he said, every American should focus on that. Instead, recent news reports reveal that the Department of Homeland Security wasn't even allowed to bring up the threat of election attacks with President Trump. As candidates hit the 2020 campaign trail, what should the Unit...
Within our lifetimes, AI will, by design, begin to behave unpredictably, thinking and acting in ways which defy human logic. Big tech companies may be inadvertently building and enabling vast arrays of intelligent systems that don't share our motivations, desires, or hopes for the future of humanity. Is it too late to change course and realize a human-centered future for a...