Comments by "Kevin Street" (@Kevin_Street) on "A.I. is about to change the world" video.

  1. I've been saying this for years, but it's hardly an original insight. Way back in 1947 the science fiction writer Jack Williamson saw this coming in his novelette "With Folded Hands." That's a story about robots that are programmed to make humans happy, and how they essentially wreck the world by doing everything we can do, but better. I think you're right that a great upheaval in perspective is coming, but it's not necessarily one where we'll realize we're not special. With all the problems we face today I don't think that idea is hard for people to grasp. The real upheaval is going to be in our conception of what the economy is for. Is the economy just a system to get things done in the most efficient way, or is it a system designed to give people something to do? Societies where AI does all the technical work and most humans are unemployed aren't going to be pleasant places to live. Basically we're going to need to choose what kind of economy we want - either an efficient economy that does everything as cheaply and productively as possible, or an economy that offers every person a job. A human centered economy where AI is simply prohibited from doing many things will be less efficient and more expensive, but in the long run it would be a better place for human beings to live. Edit: I forgot to add that AI would still have a place in a human centered economy, since there are jobs too complicated and/or awful for humans to do. For example, moderating YouTube comments. There's a vast sea of them posted every day, but an AI could keep up, and moderate them the way humans would. The AI could take the place of a vast army of human moderators that would be too expensive to hire.
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