Chinese President Xi Is Interested In Artifical Intelligence

Image: China / CCTV

Quartz: These are the two books that are helping Xi Jinping understand AI

China’s president Xi Jinping is an avid reader. He peppers his speeches with quotes from his favorite writers, including Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, and Paulo Coelho. His annual New Year’s Day greetings offers a rare look into the secrets of his office bookshelf—something Chinese netizens enthusiastically examine each January.

This year, they found that (link in Chinese) Xi rearranged two defining titles on Marxism—The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital—within easy reach of his desk. He also expanded his collections of Western literature substantially to include titles like Homer’s The Odyssey and Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. And there are some new texts about military and economics on his bookcase.

The more surprising discovery is that at least two books on understanding artificial intelligence (AI) were also spotted for the first time on Xi’s bookshelf. They are Pedro Domingos’s The Master Algorithm, and Brett King’s Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane.

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Update #1: China's president had 2 books about artificial intelligence on his shelf in his New Year speech (Business Insider)
Update #2: Chinese netizens spot AI books on president Xi Jinping’s bookshelf (The Verge)

WNU Editor: The Chinese are definitely putting their money into AI .... Beijing to build $2 billion AI research park: Xinhua (Reuters).