Artificial intelligence - wonderful and terrifying - will change life as we know it

"The year 2017 has arrived and we humans are still in charge. That reassuring proclamation came from a New Year's editorial in the Chicago Tribune. If you haven't been paying attention to the news about artificial intelligence, and particularly its newest iteration called deep learning, then it's probably time you started. This technology is poised to completely revolutionize just about everything in our lives. Experts say Canadian workers could be in for some major upheaval over the next decade as increasingly intelligent software, robotics and artificial intelligence perform more sophisticated tasks in the economy. Today, machines are able to "think" more like humans than most of us, even the scientists who study it, ever imagined. They are moving into our workplaces, homes, cars, hospitals and schools, and they are making decisions for us. Artificial intelligence has enormous potential for good. But its galloping development has also given rise to fears of massive economic ...