I haven’t talked much about AI. Generally, I don’t feel like I have a lot to add on topics that literally everybody else is talking about (even Al Gore), and at least some people have a lot more specialized knowledge than I do. But here goes:

• In the near- to medium-term, it seems to me the most typical use will be to streamline our interaction with computers. Writing computer code might be the most talked about application. AI can pretty easily write the first draft of a computer program based on a verbal description of what the programmer wants. This might save time, as long as debugging the draft code and getting it to run and produce reasonable results doesn’t take longer than it would have taken the programmer to draft, debug, and check the code. Automated debugging almost seems like an oxymoron to me, but maybe it will get better over time.
• The other way we interact with computers, though, is all those endless drop-down menus and pop-up windows and settings of settings of settings, not to mention infuriating “customer service” computers. Surely AI can help to untangle some of this and just make it easier for a normal person to communicate to a computer what they are looking for.
• So some streamlining and efficiency gains seem like a possibility. Like pretty much any technological process, these will cause some short-term employment loss and longer-term productivity gains. At least a portion of productivity gains do seem to trickle down to greater value (lower prices for what we get in return) for consumers and the middle class. How much trickles down depends on how seriously the society works on problems like market failure, regulatory capture, benefits, childcare, health care, education, training, research and development, etc.
• Increasingly personalized medicine seems like a medium- to longer-term possibility. We have heard a lot about evidence based medicine, and there is not a lot of evidence it has delivered on the promises so far. Maybe it eventually will, and maybe AI making sense of relatively unstructured health information and medical records will eventually be part of the solution.
• Longer term, AI might be able synthesize existing information and research across fields and enable better problem solving and decisions. The thing is, computer-aided decision making for policy makers and other leaders is not a new idea. It’s been around for a long time and has not necessarily improved decision making. It’s not that objective information always makes the best decision obvious or that there is always a single best decision. Decisions should be informed by a combination of objective information and values in most cases. But human beings rarely make use of even the objective information readily available to them, and often make decisions based on opinions and hunches.
• Overcoming this decision problem will be more of a social science problem than a technology problem – and social science has lagged behind the hard sciences and even (god-forbid) the semi-flaccid science of economics. Maybe AI can help these sciences catch up. Where is that psycho-history we were promised so long ago?
• Construction and urban planning are some more challenging areas that never seem to get anywhere, but maybe that is a just a cynical middle-aged veteran of the urban planning and sustainable development wars talking. I tried to help bring a system theory- and decision science-based approach to the engineering and planning sector earlier in my career, and that attempt foundered badly on the rocks of human indifference at best and ill intention at worst. Maybe that was an idea before its time and this time will be different, but I am not sure the state of information technology was the limiting factor at the time.
• Education is a tough sector. We all want to make it easier. But I have recently returned to a classroom setting after decades of virtual “training” and “industry” conferences, and the difference in what I am learning for a given investment of effort is night and day. Maybe AI could help human teachers identify the right level of content and the right format that will benefit a given student most, and then deliver it.
• And those are the ignorant but well-intentioned humans. There are many ill-intentioned humans out there. Speaking of ill-intentioned humans, if AI can be used to accelerate technological progress, it will inevitably be used to accelerate progress on weapons, propaganda, authoritarian control of populations, and just generally to concentrate wealth and power in as few hands as possible.
• Now for a fun and potentially lucrative idea: As Marc Andreessen puts it, “Don’t get me wrong, cults are fun to hear about, their written material is often creative and fascinating, and their members are engaging at dinner parties and on TV.” No longer do cults have to be built around pretend gods, we can create actual gods and then build cults around them!