How Should We Adapt to the Robot Revolution?

After years of frustration with its relatively slow pace of progress, artificial intelligence (AI) is finally beginning to deliver on expectations. Depending on who you ask, this is either cause for optimism – or horror. Putting dystopian visions of robots taking over the world aside, most observers are worried about the implications of how a workforce composed increasingly of robots will transform society and the economy. Bill Gates has now jumped into the fray, suggesting that governments should tax robots to fund training for people replaced by robots. Rather than having a knee-jerk reaction to news of advances in AI, however, we should take a wider view of how technological advances have impacted human welfare over the past two centuries.