In a flourishing automation-enhanced world, clear, convenient interfaces could let humans control automation to make the most of people's initiative, creativity and responsibility. The most successful machines could be powerful tools that let users carry out ever-richer tasks with confidence, such as helping architects find innovative ways to design energy-efficient buildings, and giving journalists tools to dig deeper into data to detect fraud and corruption. Other machines could detect – not contribute to – problems like unsafe medical conditions and bias in mortgage loan approvals. Perhaps they could even advise the people responsible on ways to fix things.

Those tempting dreams have distracted many of them from where the real progress is already happening: in systems that enhance – rather than replace – human capabilities. To accelerate the shift to new ways of thinking, AI designers and developers could take some lessons from the missteps of past researchers. For example, alchemists, like Isaac Newton, pursued ambitious goals such as converting lead to gold, creating a panacea to cure all diseases, and finding potions for immortality. While these goals are alluring, the charlatans pursuing them may have secured princely financial backing that would have been better used developing modern chemistry. Equally optimistically, astrologers believed they could understand human personality based on birthdates and predict future events by studying the positions of the stars and planets.

Artificial intelligence researchers and engineers have spent a lot of effort trying to build machines that look like humans and operate largely independently. Those tempting dreams have distracted many of them from where the real progress is already happening: in systems that enhance – rather than replace – human capabilities. To accelerate the shift to new ways of thinking, AI designers and developers could take some lessons from the missteps of past researchers. For example, alchemists, like Isaac Newton, pursued ambitious goals such as converting lead to gold, creating a panacea to cure all diseases, and finding potions for immortality. While these goals are alluring, the charlatans pursuing them may have secured princely financial backing that would have been better used developing modern chemistry.