Is artificial intelligence going off the rails?

Elon Musk thinks artificial intelligence poses a mortal danger to human civilization. Alibaba founder Jack Ma thinks AI could be responsible for World War III. Bill Gates supports a robot tax. Mark Zuckerberg believes AI will make our lives better. But as the debate over the possibly apocalyptic consequences of building human-like intelligence rolls on, one thing has been curiously absent: the voices of engineers with actual, hands-on experience in designing AI. "Artificial intelligence" is a bit of a catch-all term today.