Kai-Fu Lee transitioned to founding 01.AI after realizing the potential of generative AI following OpenAI's ChatGPT launch. He felt that starting a Gen AI company in China was crucial to prevent the country from falling behind in AI advancements, especially since OpenAI's models were not available in China. He believed his experience and network gave him a unique opportunity to build a competitive AI company tailored for the Chinese market.
The '996' work ethic, which stands for working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week, is a hallmark of Chinese entrepreneurship. It reflects the intense dedication and hard work of Chinese entrepreneurs, who often prioritize rapid execution and scaling over work-life balance. This ethic has been a driving force behind China's ability to execute and scale innovations effectively.
Kai-Fu Lee believes Google's advertising-driven business model is unsustainable in the long term due to the rise of generative AI, which provides single, direct answers to queries. He predicts that Google will face an innovator's dilemma, as transitioning to a new business model would require sacrificing significant advertising revenue, which is challenging for a publicly listed company.
Open-source AI plays a critical role in 01.AI's development by enabling collaboration and leveraging existing technologies from the global AI community. Kai-Fu Lee emphasizes the importance of giving back to the open-source community, as 01.AI uses open-source tools like NVIDIA's Megatron and Microsoft's Deep Speed. The company follows the Apache license, allowing others to use its models without restrictions.
Kai-Fu Lee predicts that within the next 2-3 years, every mobile app will incorporate AI, leading to disruptive changes in how apps function. He expects AI agents to become a major technology, enabling users to delegate tasks rather than just receive answers. Additionally, he foresees significant advancements in multimodal AI, with applications like text-to-video becoming mainstream and finding real-world uses in areas like marketing.
Kai-Fu Lee estimates a 5% chance of AI causing a disaster, a 35% chance of humans misusing AI to cause harm, and a 60% chance of AI being overwhelmingly beneficial. He advocates for more AI safety research and applying existing laws to regulate AI misuse, rather than creating new, untested regulations. He believes technological solutions are the best way to mitigate AI risks.
China faces significant challenges in AI development due to U.S. restrictions on GPU exports, limiting access to critical computing resources. Kai-Fu Lee highlights that 01.AI operates with only 2,000 GPUs, a fraction of what U.S. companies like OpenAI and Google use. This scarcity has driven the company to focus on efficiency and innovation to compete globally.
Beago aims to revolutionize search by providing a single, correct answer to user queries, aligning with Larry Page's vision of the ultimate search engine. It focuses on maximizing factuality and speed, making it particularly suitable for mobile devices. Beago is designed to be fast, affordable, and highly accurate, offering a competitive alternative to traditional search engines.
Kai-Fu Lee believes the U.S. leads in breakthrough innovations due to its strong university system, research labs, and culture of risk-taking. In contrast, China excels in execution, leveraging its entrepreneurial work ethic and ability to rapidly scale and refine products. He notes that Chinese entrepreneurs focus on building practical, user-friendly applications rather than pursuing academic accolades.
Kai-Fu Lee advises AI entrepreneurs to carefully manage inference costs, as they can be prohibitively expensive. He suggests timing product launches to align with decreasing costs and avoiding over-reliance on modeling companies that may absorb their innovations. He also emphasizes the importance of building a moat around their apps, such as through brand loyalty, user data, or social graphs, to maintain long-term value.
In this episode, Kai-Fu and Peter discuss 01.AI’s growth, Chinese entrepreneurship, and how open-source AI can impact the world.
Recorded on Oct 19th, 2024
Views are my own thoughts; not Financial, Medical, or Legal Advice.
Kai-Fu Lee is the Chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures, a venture capital firm he founded in 2009 that manages over $2 billion in assets and focuses on fostering the next generation of Chinese high-tech companies. In 2023, Lee launched 01.AI, a startup that built AI applications tailored for China, including Wanzhi, a productivity assistant similar to Microsoft Office 365 Copilot. As a leading figure in artificial intelligence, Lee continues to shape the tech landscape in China, where he recently noted that Chinese AI models are only 6 to 9 months behind their U.S. counterparts. He has authored influential books such as AI Superpowers (2018) and AI 2041 (2021) and was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2013. Earlier in his career, Lee held prominent positions in tech, including Vice President at Google, President of Google China (2005-2009), and Corporate Vice President at Microsoft (2000- 2005). He also founded and led Microsoft Research Asia from 1998 to 2000. Lee remains a highly respected thought leader in AI and continues to drive innovation in the field.
Beago: https://www.beago.ai/)
01.AI: https://www.01.ai/)
Kai-Fu’s X: https://x.com/kaifulee)
Kai-Fu’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaifulee/)
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