The Great AI Paradox

Don’t worry about supersmart AI eliminating all the jobs. That’s just a distraction from the problems even relatively dumb computers are causing.

Max Tegmark, a Physics professor at MIT, stands behind the Schrödinger equation for quantum mechanics (top) and Einstein’s general theory of relativity ( bottom) at his office in MIT — Josh Reynolds for The Washington Post via Getty Images

By Brian Bergstein

You’ve probably heard versions of each of the following ideas.

1. With computers becoming remarkably adept at driving, understanding speech, and other tasks, more jobs could soon be automated than society is prepared to handle.

2. Improvements in computers’ skills will stack up until machines are far smarter than people. This “superintelligence” will largely make human labor unnecessary. In fact, we’d better hope that machines don’t eliminate us altogether, either accidentally or on purpose.

This is tricky. Even though the first scenario is already under way, it won’t necessarily lead to the second one. That second idea, despite being an obsession of some very knowledgeable and thoughtful people, is based on huge assumptions. If anything, it’s a diversion from taking more responsibility for the effects of today’s level of automation and dealing with the concentration of power in the technology industry.

To really see what’s going on, we have to be clear on what has been achieved — and what remains far from solved — in…