AI Killing Jobs: Tech Community Shocked By Trump Treasury Secretary's Disinterest In Automation

President Donald Trump's pick for Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said Friday he isn't worried about the potential effects of artificial intelligence on the American workforce, which in turn caused considerable consternation within the tech community. In an interview with Axios, Mnuchin said the possibility of AI taking human jobs is "not even on my radar screen" and suggested it was "50-100 more years" away. He insisted he wasn't worried about automation displacing humans in the work force and said, "In fact I'm optimistic." Read: EU To Debate Robots' Legal Rights After Committee Calls For Mandatory AI'Kill Switches' That sentiment did not sit well with Silicon Valley and the broader tech community--the very people behind the technology that Mnuchin is unconcerned with. "Personally I'm dumbfounded," Amy Webb, the head of the Future Today Institute, said on Twitter.