Artificial intelligence: The return of the machinery question

Fears that new machines would gobble up jobs and turn society upside down were widespread as the Industrial Revolution unfolded two centuries ago. Back then the controversy over the dangers posed by machines was known as the "machinery question". Now a very similar debate is under way once again, thanks to advances in artificial intelligence (AI), which allow machines to perform tasks that could previously be done only by humans. The field of artificial intelligence was founded in the 1950s, and for decades it promised far more than it could deliver. But in the past five years it has taken off, thanks to a versatile technique called "deep learning", which can be applied to a vast range of tasks.