Sergey Brin warns of AI threats through a 'technology renaissance'
The idea that AI will affect employment is very dubious to me:<p>- This stuff was talked about all the time during the industrial revolution. But it turns out that automation just increased worked productivity and made people more valuable.<p>- Since ATMs were introduced, the number of bank tellers in the US actually went up.<p>- Certain industries have actually become <i>de</i>automated over time. As an example: coffee. It used to be exclusively made by automated machines. Now hand-making coffees is one of the largest businesses in America.<p>- AI is only as smart as the data you feed it. Even Google&#x27;s own search rankings have to have human minders because people are too good at gaming their algorithms.<p>- AI is only good at the thing that human beings are very bad at - making quick, analytics based decisions. Of course this is a threat to middle management and executive functions. But for people who actually make things or solve problems, there&#x27;s just one more thing to make and solve problems about.<p>There are some very real concerns about organizations using AI to make decisions about people without human oversight. Imagine an AI tasked with college admissions, bad decisions without possibility of human intervention could hurt people - are we sure it would be that much worse than our current system, often tainted by bias, money, and racism?<p>My concern is that the leaders in the corporate tech world created huge organizations by automating our lives, and now they want to act as gatekeepers on the kinds of automation that is acceptable.<p>Edit:<p>To add to this - a companies stance on AI will probably follow their belief in whether humans are underrated or overrated. Google designs products believing humans are overrated - they think people will be victims of AI. Amazon thinks people are underrated (based on Amazon Turk, customer service, warehouse design) - ironically, they won&#x27;t think humans will overall be harmed by AI.