The Seven Deadly Sins Of AI Predictions

Mistaken extrapolations, limited imagination, and other common mistakes that distract us from thinking more productively about the future. We are surrounded by hysteria about the future of artificial intelligence and robotics--hysteria about how powerful they will become, how quickly, and what they will do to jobs. I recently saw a story in MarketWatch that said robots will take half of today's jobs in 10 to 20 years. It even had a graphic to prove the numbers. How many robots are currently operational in those jobs? How many realistic demonstrations have there been of robots working in this arena? Similar stories apply to all the other categories where it is suggested that we will see the end of more than 90 percent of jobs that currently require physical presence at some particular site. Mistaken predictions lead to fears of things that are not going to happen, whether it's the wide-scale destruction of jobs, the Singularity, or the advent of AI that has values different from ours and might try to destroy us.