
Artificial Intelligence: March of the Machines - nopinsight
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21701119-what-history-tells-us-about-future-artificial-intelligenceand-how-society-should
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nopinsight
This is a leading article of the Economist's special issue on AI.

Their take on the impact of AI on job markets is that welfare systems will
have to be updated, but people should also adjust. They can take on new roles
in society through lifelong learning and use of online learning, perhaps with
the help of AI itself and video-game-style simulations. Character and social
skills may become more important as these are unlikely to be fully substituted
by machines in the foreseeable future.

I agree with most of it apart from their dismissive argument against the
danger of AI as a very long term problem. Rapid progress in AI has just been
demonstrated by deep learning's human-level performance in several tasks,
emerged over the span of a few years. There is no guarantee that the upcoming
advances will not catch us off-guard.

