The Future of AI: a Non-Alarmist Viewpoint

Nerval's Lobster writes: There has been a lot of discussion recently about the dangers posed by building truly intelligent machines. A lot of well-educated and smart people, including Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking, have stated they are fearful about the dangers that sentient Artificial Intelligence (AI) poses to humanity. But maybe it makes more sense to focus on the societal challenges that advances in AI will pose in the near future (Dice link), rather than worrying about what will happen when we eventually solve the titanic problem of building an artificial general intelligence that actually works. Once the self-driving car becomes a reality, for example, thousands of taxi drivers, truck drivers and delivery people will be out of a job practically overnight, as economic competition forces companies to make the switch to self-driving fleets as quickly as possible. Don't worry about a hypothetical SkyNet, in other words; the bigger issue is what a (dumber) AI will do to your profession over the next several years.

Comments

Re:We're in it together

[phantomfive]

But 200 years ago, if you did NOT have a job, you could go farm and support yourself.

No. To farm, you need land. 200 years ago, if you did not have a job, you sold yourself as an indentured servant.

Re:We're in it together

[Niggle]

We didn't get unemployment and collapse of society when machinery destroyed 90% of those jobs.

From a long-term view (decades), no we didn't get massive unemployment.
From a short-term view (years), yes we did. The early phases of the industrial revolution saw very high unemployment. And with no welfare systems back then, quite a few of those people starved to death or turned to crime. The majority were badly mistreated by those who owned the early factories because there were no other jobs around. The agricultural revolution had a similar history.

So if/when an AI takes over your job, your choices are likely to be:
a) Starve
b) Crime
c) Crappy job
d) Try and retrain to a new field before that gets taken over by AIs as well.
e) Hope society gets rebuilt on less capitalistic lines and you can enjoy a life of leisure.

I'm sure it'll all sort itself out within a generation. Doesn't really help that generation though.