AI & The Future of Work: US Shouldn't Lag in Artificial Intelligence

TODAY, IN 2017, the president's top economic advisor said he had no worries about robots putting people out of work. "In terms of artificial intelligence taking over the jobs, I think we're so far away from that that it's not even on my radar screen," Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told an audience in Washington. "I think it's 50 or 100 more years." Mnuchin has made similarly confounding statements about AI before. "Not even on my radar screen," he said breezily during an Axios interview: Mnuchin's blasé dismissal of AI's potential impact on jobs shouldn't surprise readers because, as the Washington Post reported (August 5, 2016) in an article scarily entitled "Trump's Economic Team Has Six Men Named Steve But No Women," Trump's team of economic advisors, initially comprised of 13 men, seemed woefully imbalanced in many respects.