As Thought Leaders Worry About Artificial Intelligence ....

• Last week, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, during a session on Reddit, shared his views about artificial intelligence and said "I am in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence. First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage it well. A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern. I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don't understand why some people are not concerned."
• At a conference in October, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said, “I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I were to guess what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful with the artificial intelligence. Increasingly scientists think there should be some regulatory oversight maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish. With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon.”
• During a BBC interview in December, physicist Stephen Hawking said, "The primitive forms of artificial intelligence we already have, have proved very useful. But I think the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. Once humans develop artificial intelligence it would take off on its own and redesign itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete and would be superseded.”

OUR TAKE

• Ironically, as Gates, Musk, Hawking and others warn about the long-term threat of artificial intelligence, they embrace and advance the use of significant technology innovation in the short term.
• More immediate concerns for policy makers, business leaders andcitizens seem to be the social and economic implications of the increased use of automation in a broad set of industries – which is having adampening effect on global employment and wage growth trends.