Kai-Fu Lee

Kai-Fu Lee
李開復
Kai-Fu Lee in December 2007
BornDecember 3, 1961 (1961-12-03) (age 62)
Taipei County, Taiwan
NationalityTaiwanese
CitizenshipTaiwanese
American (until 2011)[1]
EducationColumbia University (BS)
Carnegie Mellon University (PhD)
Occupations
  • Businessman
  • computer scientist
  • investor
  • writer
Known for
Scientific career
Fields
ThesisLarge-vocabulary speaker-independent continuous speech recognition: The SPHINX system (1988)
Doctoral advisorRaj Reddy

Kai-Fu Lee (traditional Chinese: 李開復; simplified Chinese: 李开复; pinyin: Lǐ Kāifù; born December 3, 1961) is a Taiwanese businessman, computer scientist, investor, and writer. He is currently based in Beijing, China.

Lee has worked as an executive, first at Apple, then SGI, Microsoft, and Google. He became the focus of a 2005 legal dispute between Google and Microsoft, his former employer, due to a one-year non-compete agreement that he signed with Microsoft in 2000 when he became its corporate vice president of interactive services.[2]

He works in the Chinese internet sector and was the founding director of Microsoft Research Asia, serving from 1998 to 2000; and president of Google China, serving from July 2005 through September 4, 2009. After resigning from his post, he founded Sinovation Ventures, a venture capital firm. He created a website, Wǒxuéwǎng (Chinese: 我学网; lit. 'I-Learn Web') dedicated to helping young Chinese people in their studies and careers and wrote "10 Letters to Chinese College Students". He is a micro-blogger in China, in particular on Sina Weibo, where he has over 50 million followers.

In his 2018 book AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, Lee describes how China is rapidly moving forward to become the global leader in artificial intelligence (AI), and may well surpass the United States, because of China's demographics and its amassing of huge data sets.[3][4][5][6] In a September 28, 2018 interview on the PBS Amanpour program, he stated that AI, with all its capabilities, will never be capable of creativity or empathy.[7]

  1. ^ Shao, Heng (October 15, 2013). "Ex-Google China Chief Lee Kaifu Under Propagandist Attack". Forbes. Retrieved November 1, 2024.
  2. ^ "Google China's Kaifu Lee Resigns | CNReviews". Archived from the original on September 6, 2009. Retrieved September 4, 2009.
  3. ^ Kai-Fu Lee (September 25, 2018). AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order. Boston, Mass: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 9781328546395. OCLC 1035622189.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Forbes_Fannin_2017 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYT_Friedman_2018 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ Allen, Gregory (February 6, 2019). "Understanding China's AI Strategy". Center for a New American Security.
  7. ^ "Kai-Fu Lee on the Race for Artificial Intelligence". PBS. September 28, 2018.