Artificial Intelligence: Must the Challenge to Human Decision Making be an Either/Or Proposition? –

Concerns regarding artificial intelligence, machine learning, and automation have recently received a considerable amount of attention. Do these advancements pose a threat that will destroy the jobs created in the post-industrial revolution at best or at worst leave us all as physically passive creatures reclining on lounge chairs in the world anticipated by "The Matrix"? Unquestionably, however, recent advances in artificial intelligence appear all-encompassing and more rapid than previous workplace disruptions. At times, we are guilty of believing that all things are new and unique to the present. Fears of the dehumanization of the workers of the world are at least as old as the industrial revolution and Charlie Chaplin's character in "Modern Times." They probably predate recorded history with early man wondering if the invention of the wheel would lead to unemployment and the moral decay of subsequent generations.