Artificial intelligence stirs our highest ambitions and deepest fears like few other technologies. It's as if every gleaming and Promethean promise of machines able to perform tasks at speeds and with skills of which we can only dream carries with it a countervailing nightmare of human displacement and obsolescence. But despite recent A.I. breakthroughs in previously human-dominated realms of language and visual art -- the prose compositions of the GPT-3 language model and visual creations of the DALL-E 2 system have drawn intense interest -- our gravest concerns should probably be tempered. At least that's according to the computer scientist Yejin Choi, a 2022 recipient of the prestigious MacArthur "genius" grant who has been doing groundbreaking research on developing common sense and ethical reasoning in A.I. "There is a bit of hype around A.I. potential, as well as A.I. fear," admits Choi, who is 45. Which isn't to say the story of humans and A.I. will be without its surprises.

Disclaimer: The purpose of this article is not to disparage machine learning in any shape or form. Machine learning is lovely, I make my living off it! The point is simply to explore the edges and try to see what lies beyond. Imagine a young Isaac Newton sitting under a tree when he notices an apple fall. He thinks about it for a moment and realizes that he has never really seen an apple do anything else but fall straight down.

Shaunak Khire is co-founder of a stealth ML/AI startup that can analyze, write and output insights autonomously. He also is a partner at the MaghaCGI30 social impact index fund. Previously he was the co-founder of an adtech startup and has served on the global board of the Mobile Marketing Association. He was formerly part of the Clinton Global Initiative tech and poverty alleviation working groups. As the world was collectively watching results of the 2016 election, we got a barrage of emails from people congratulating our AI for predicting a Trump win.