Robotics pioneer Rodney Brooks debunks AI hype seven ways

He is best known for his adage now referred to as Amara's Law: We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run. This is a problem I regularly encounter when trying to debate with people about whether we should fear artificial general intelligence, or AGI--the idea that we will build autonomous agents that operate much like beings in the world. Now suppose a person tells us that a particular photo shows people playing Frisbee in the park. Computers that can label images like "people playing Frisbee in a park" have no chance of answering those questions.