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Confessions of an AI Optimist

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Confessions of an AI Optimist

An Interview with MIT’s Andrew McAfee

Boston Consulting Group,

5 min read
5 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

Are you dreading the automated future of work? This interview may help you reconsider your pessimism. 

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Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Analytical
  • Visionary
  • Concrete Examples

Recommendation

Predictions about the future of work can be alarming. Yet not everybody buys into the doomsday scenarios that innovator Elon Musk and others have popularized. MIT scientist and author Andrew McAfee, who studies the impact of new technologies, shares a rosier view in his latest book Machine, Platform, Crowd – co-written with technologist Erik Brynjolfsson. The book informs this pithy, expert interview with Boston Consulting Group managing director Massimo Russo. getAbstract suggests this talk to everybody interested in the coming “automated economy.”

Summary

As today’s companies train their algorithms, they face the risk that skewed or bad data will lead to inferior AI systems. This problem isn’t new. The “garbage-in, garbage-out risk” emerged with the notion of calculating devices. However, the autonomy of artificial intelligence amplifies the threat. Programmers don’t control the system.

Though AI will transform many professions, medicine and health care will remain “human-centric” for the foreseeable future. These activities require social skills. Thus, although AI-powered tools will soon...

About the Speaker

Andrew McAfee is the co-director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy and the co-author of Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future. 


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