The Role of AI in Social Change

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My concerns are really quite broad. I recently have been studying Henry Adams book, the education of Henry Adams and Adams in the last brilliant chapters of his book lays out what he calls the dynamic theory of history. He set forth a hypothesis, which is that the amount of power or force at the disposal of human beings doubles or has doubled every decade since around 1800. So if we think about artificial intelligence, the rate of acceleration seems to be even greater in terms of the forces at our disposal than then Adams understood it to be. And one of my concerns is the way that AI is going to put loads of people out of work,. There are all sorts of jobs, computer programming, for example

In the early 1900s, the philosopher Henry Adams expressed concern about the rapid rate of social change ushered in by new technologies, from the railways to the telegraph and ultimately airplanes. If we transpose Adams's concerns onto the power of artificial intelligence--a power whose rate of acceleration would have exceeded his wildest dreams--you might feel a bit uneasy. Listen as philosopher Jacob Howland of UATX speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about why too much leisure is at best a mixed blessing, and how technology can lead to intellectual atrophy. They also speak about the role of AI in education and its implications for that most human of traits: curiosity. Finally, they discuss Howland's biggest concern when it comes to outsourcing our tasks, and our thinking, to machines: that we'll ultimately end up surrendering our own liberty.