Artificial Intelligence Nears the Summit of Hype in Davos

Artificial intelligence approached the summit of hype at this year's World Economic Forum. AI was on the lips of seemingly every corporate chief and policy maker attending this year's conference in Davos, Switzerland. On Wednesday, the term "artificial intelligence" appeared in more than 20 headlines and stories Bloomberg ran about the gathering. British Prime Minister Theresa May announced a new government-funded center to advise on ethical use of AI and French President Emmanuel Macron launched a 10 billion euro innovation fund aimed at new technologies like AI. AI is going to be more important than humanity's mastery of fire or electricity, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said. Alibaba founder Jack Ma warned that AI and robots are going to "kill a lot of jobs" and could start a third world war.