AI is changing work but work will change AI too.Getty What does it mean for a machine to be intelligent? For decades, the common answer to that question has been to pass the "Turing test." This test, named after famed mathematician Alan Turing, says that if a machine can carry on a conversation with a human via a textual interface such that the human can not tell the difference between a human and machine, then the machine is intelligent.

The basic fact is that technology eliminates jobs, not work. It is the continuous obligation of economic policy to match increases in productive potential with increases in purchasing power and demand. Otherwise the potential created by technical progress runs to waste in idle capacity, unemployment, and deprivation. The fear that machines will replace human labor is a durable one in the public mind, from the time of the Luddites in the early 19th century. Yet most economists have viewed "the end of humans in jobs" as a groundless fear, inconsistent with the evidence.