When the robots rise up, they won't take your life. They'll take your job, particularly those in fields primed for automation, like manufacturing, trucking, and customer service. Technologists, economists, and policymakers believe this future is all but inevitable, and say it's time to begin thinking seriously about how to ensure artificial intelligence advances humanity--and improves the economy, without leaving the middle class behind. Two economists who recently left Washington say the answer lies in ensuring the government provides enough of a safety net to help middle class Americans navigate the coming transition. Jason Furman and Gene Sperling--former chief economic advisors to President Obama--prefer to think of it as a bridge, not a net, that will help people reach the future.

Data privacy measures such as the General Data Protection Regulation and the California Consumer Privacy Act are expanding the definition and protection of private sensitive data. Anonymization efforts, though valiant, can only go so far. "You can only manage what you measure, right?" said Hannah Sperling (pictured), business process intelligence, academic and research alliances at SAP SE. "But if everybody is afraid to touch sensitive data, we might not get to where we want to be. I've been getting into data anonymization procedures, because if we could render more workforce data usable, especially when it comes to increasing diversity in STEM or in technology jobs, we should really be letting the data speak." Sperling spoke with Lisa Martin, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media's livestreaming studio, during the Women in Data Science (WiDS) event.

Over the past few years, brands have been toying with different ways AI can double as a wordsmith. While these experiments have proven that AI's ability to "learn" mass amounts of information give it a unique advantage when it comes to churning out copy, it's also become increasingly clear that there's only so much the technology can provide from a creative perspective. Take Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles, which trained IBM Watson to spit out copy for Toyota Mirai ads in 2017 as part of a campaign geared toward tech and science enthusiasts. While Watson was eventually able to unearth some interesting insights and string together clever lines of copy, getting there was a laborious process that involved months of training. Last year, Alibaba's digital marketing arm unveiled an AI-powered copywriting tool for brands to leverage on its ecommerce sites.

When the robots rise up, they won't take your life. They'll take your job, particularly those in fields primed for automation, like manufacturing, trucking, and customer service. Technologists, economists, and policymakers believe this future is all but inevitable, and say it's time to begin thinking seriously about how to ensure artificial intelligence advances humanity--and improves the economy, without leaving the middle class behind. Two economists who recently left Washington say the answer lies in ensuring the government provides enough of a safety net to help middle class Americans navigate the coming transition. Jason Furman and Gene Sperling--former chief economic advisors to President Obama--prefer to think of it as a bridge, not a net, that will help people reach the future.