I'm Elise Hu, you're listening to TED Talks Daily.

So what does the future hold when it comes to artificial intelligence?

Technologist Kai Fu Lee is an AI backer who wanted to make the progress of AI accessible to wider audiences.

So he teamed up with a fiction writer, Stanley Chen, to turn these themes and predictions

into stories. In today's conversation from a 2021 TED membership event, the two of them talk

with Ted's technology curator, Simone Ross, about how they used the facts about AI to inform

imaginative storytelling so that we all better understand its potential.

Thank you so much for joining us for today's event featuring technologist and AI expert, Dr. Kai Fu Lee,

and science fiction writer Stanley Chan. They are co-authors of the new book, AI 2041, 10 visions for our future, which will be

released here in the U.S. on September 14th. Kai Fu, Stanley, thank you both so much for joining us.

Kai Fu, I'm going to start with you. Why write this book together?

Well, it is my belief that AI is the most important technology for

mankind in the history of mankind. And it's important for everyone to really understand it.

It's implications and challenges. But just reading technology descriptions, such as the ones I

have written as a technologist and investor,

it's just not reachable to everyone. And I think it's so important that if there is a way to

make the storytelling really interesting and engaging and even entertaining, then more people

can access it and can kind of see where the

future holds. So with that idea in mind, I talked to Stanley about co-authoring the book with

him writing the stories, and that's what hopefully will draw a lot more people to it.

Wonderful. And Stanley, I believe part of the process was you wrote the story first,

and then Kifu would write the accompanying sort of explanation. Did that constrain your imagination

...