We're on the brink of an artificial intelligence arms race. But we can curb it -- World Economic Forum

The doomsday scenarios spun around this theme are so outlandish -- like The Matrix, in which human-created artificial intelligence plugs humans into a simulated reality to harvest energy from their bodies -- it's difficult to visualize them as serious threats. Meanwhile, artificially intelligent systems continue to develop apace. Self-driving cars are beginning to share our roads; pocket-sized devices respond to our queries and manage our schedules in real-time; algorithms beat us at Go; robots become better at getting up when they fall over. It's obvious how developing these technologies will benefit humanity. But, then -- don't all the dystopian sci-fi stories start out this way? One is overly credulous scare-mongering. But the other extreme is equally dangerous -- complacency that we don't need to think about these issues, because humanity-threatening AI is decades or more away.