AI: The promise and the peril

The forecast is not all gloomy – artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and automation are also expected to create jobs that will likely be much more interesting and creative than the repetitive tasks of the industrial age. According to Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at MIT and co-director of the university's Initiative on the Digital Economy (IDE), AI amounts to, "the largest disruption in labor and the way we work," in generations. But as Joi Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab and moderator of a panel titled, "Putting AI to Work," put it, the fear that machines will become smarter than humans and take over the world is tempered by the reality that "they're stupid and they've already taken over the world." Seth Earley, CEO of Earley Information Science, while agreeing there will be, "an enormous amount of disruption," from AI, was more optimistic about retraining for the jobs of the future.