AI's effect on employment will be similar to the effect of spreadsheets on the finance industry. AI can get a bad rap. The idea that artificial intelligence can automate work naturally raises the question, "Well, what happens to the people who were doing that work?" While that is a valid question, most of this generation of artificial intelligence--the kind I focus on investing in--could actually improve jobs and even can increase employment. Most AI today is mental automation, the speeding up of mundane tasks of thought. Given the fact that most thought work is now done with computers, thought work is more straightforward for computers to automate than physical work.

I most appreciate AI when it augments human work and makes us stronger or more effective; when it performs tasks that we do not want to do or struggle to do, thereby freeing us to enjoy the activities we are good at and like. Remember how the introduction of the electronic spreadsheet did not make accountants or statisticians obsolete but instead gave them numerical "super-powers" that made their work easier and better? But what is critical is that companies and consumers understand how an AI algorithm uses data to make better decisions that protect all stakeholders from disappointment and harm. This means AI's decision-making process must be transparent to reinforce trust, fair to avoid bias, protective of data to ensure privacy, and vigilant against cybersecurity threats to prevent external abuse. As well as having negative implications for the consumer, the possible harm of misuse of data by AI can tarnish a company's brand, stripping away the trust that it has worked so hard to build over the years.

Dan Bricklin, of Newton, Mass., inventor of the personal computer spreadsheet, stands with a laptop computer in his Newton home, Wednesday, May 24, 2006 (AP Photo/Steven Senne) When President Carter talked to Americans in July 1979 about their crisis of confidence--"the erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America"--Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston were witnessing the rapidly rising confidence in their electronic spreadsheet, the first killer app for the PC. A little over three years later, Time magazine named the PC "the Machine of the Year," observing that this innovation "happened to pop up when it did, right now, at this point in time, like the politicians call it, because we were getting hungry to be ourselves again." This week's milestones in the history of technology include the birth of VisiCalc, the world's first handheld-sized scientific calculator, and Daguerreotype photography. Software Arts is incorporated by founders Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston for the purpose of developing VisiCalc, the world's first spreadsheet program, which will be published by a separate company, Personal Software Inc. (later named VisiCorp). VisiCalc will come to be widely regarded as the first "killer app" that turned the PC into a serious business tool.