Obama on AI
It’s hard to think of a single technology that will shape our world more in the next 50 years than artificial intelligence. As the Guest Editor of November’s Issue of WIRED, President Obama and MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito have a wide-ranging discussion on the future of AI. They note that most people aren’t spending a lot of time right now worrying about singularity—they are worrying about “Well, is my job going to be replaced by a machine?” Obama tends to be on the optimistic side—historically we’ve absorbed new technologies and people find that new jobs are created. He does think that we may be in a slightly different period now, simply because of the pervasive applicability of AI and other technologies. High-skill folks do very well in these systems. Low-wage, low-skill individuals become more and more redundant, and their jobs may not be replaced, but wages are suppressed. Learn more at Wired (15 minutes).