AI expert: Worry more about jobs than killer robots

While there has been a lot of talk about super-smart artificial intelligence lately, one of the leaders in the field thinks there are more pressing problems for humanity to solve. Andrew Ng, the cofounder of Coursera and former chief scientist at Chinese technology powerhouse Baidu, told an audience at a Harvard Business Review event today that we should be far more concerned about the job losses that will come as a result of machine learning. "As an AI insider, having built and shipped a lot of AI products, I don't see a clear path for AI to surpass human-level intelligence," he said. "I think that job displacement is a huge problem, and the one that I wish we could focus on, rather than be distracted by these science fiction-ish, dystopian elements." Ng has been involved with several leading AI projects, including the Google Brain team.