[ExI] The Real Threat of Artificial Intelligence

[Anthony Papillion]

On Jun 25, 2017, 5:27 PM, at 5:27 PM, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:
>On Mon, 26 Jun 2017 at 6:23 am, BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The Real Threat of Artificial Intelligence
>> By KAI-FU LEE  JUNE 24, 2017
>>
>> <
>>
>https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/24/opinion/sunday/artificial-intelligence-economic-inequality.html
>> >
>>
>> Quotes:
>>
>> BEIJING — What worries you about the coming world of artificial
>> intelligence?
>>
>> Too often the answer to this question resembles the plot of a sci-fi
>> thriller. People worry that developments in A.I. will bring about the
>> “singularity” — that point in history when A.I. surpasses human
>> intelligence, leading to an unimaginable revolution in human affairs.
>> Or they wonder whether instead of our controlling artificial
>> intelligence, it will control us, turning us, in effect, into
>cyborgs.
>>
>> On the contrary, the A.I. products that now exist are improving
>faster
>> than most people realize and promise to radically transform our
>world,
>> not always for the better. They are only tools, not a competing form
>> of intelligence. But they will reshape what work means and how wealth
>> is created, leading to unprecedented economic inequalities and even
>> altering the global balance of power.
>>
>> Unlike the Industrial Revolution and the computer revolution, the
>A.I.
>> revolution is not taking certain jobs (artisans, personal assistants
>> who use paper and typewriters) and replacing them with other jobs
>> (assembly-line workers, personal assistants conversant with
>> computers). Instead, it is poised to bring about a wide-scale
>> decimation of jobs — mostly lower-paying jobs, but some higher-paying
>> ones, too.
>>
>> This transformation will result in enormous profits for the companies
>> that develop A.I., as well as for the companies that adopt it.
>>
>> We are thus facing two developments that do not sit easily together:
>> enormous wealth concentrated in relatively few hands and enormous
>> numbers of people out of work. What is to be done?
>
>
>"Decimation" is not the right word. It means elimination of one in ten,
>which would not be that bad.
>
>I don't see AI as  necessarily bad if it eliminates human jobs. It is
>essentially a way of continuing the increase in human productivity and
>wealth that technology has been responsible for over thousands of
>years.
>The challenge will be to distribute the increased wealth. If goods and
>services become very cheap due to AI, it will be possible to do this
>without resorting to crippling public debt or taxation.
>-- 
>Stathis Papaioannou
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>extropy-chat mailing list
>extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20170625/997782e9/attachment.html>