Artificial Intelligence And The End Of Work - AI Summary

The idea behind centaur chess was simple: while the best AI could now defeat the best human at chess, an AI and human working together (a "centaur") would be the most powerful player of all, because man and machine would bring complementary skills to bear. And because humans and AIs are strong on different dimensions, together, as a centaur, they can beat out solo humans and computers alike." AI is now so far superior to humanity in this domain that a human player would simply have nothing to add. For instance, once an AI system can provably drive a truck better and safer in all conditions than a human can--the technology is not there today, but it is getting closer--it simply will not make sense for humans to continue driving trucks. A common refrain in the field of radiology these days goes like this: "AI will not replace radiologists, but radiologists who use AI will replace radiologists who do not." This is a quintessential articulation of the myth of augmentation. So to start, AI will indeed be used to augment human radiologists: to provide a second opinion, for instance, or to sift through troves of images to prioritize those that merit human review. Once it is established beyond dispute that neural networks are superior to human radiologists at classifying medical images--across patient populations, care settings, disease states--will it really make sense to continue employing human radiologists? From security guards to accountants, from taxi drivers to lawyers, from cashiers to stock brokers, from court reporters to pathologists, human workers across the economy will find their skills out of demand and their roles obsolete as increasingly sophisticated AI systems come to perform these activities better, cheaper and faster than humans can. Chief among these are roles that involve empathy, camaraderie, social interaction, the "human touch." Human babysitters, nurses, therapists, schoolteachers, and social workers, for instance, will continue to find work for many years to come. The idea behind centaur chess was simple: while the best AI could now defeat the best human at chess, an AI and human working together (a "centaur") would be the most powerful player of all, because man and machine would bring complementary skills to bear. And because humans and AIs are strong on different dimensions, together, as a centaur, they can beat out solo humans and computers alike."