Garry Kasparov: prediction

Transcript context

…Let’s say there’s a mortgage-lending algorithm, and someone charges that it’s discriminatory. It lends too often, say, to white people, and not enough to black people. There’s some kind of trial or regulatory inquiry, and the first thing everyone realizes is that no human can even understand the algorithm, much less judge it. What happens then, legally? Or is it simply the case that so many new chains of cause and effect are so nontransparent to us, we don’t even know what to do? My answer is, I don’t know. But that’s exactly why we should not worry about the future. The problem with the future is if we know what’s going to happen — that’s always not good. We don’t know. That means that in the situation that you described, we’ll need new kind of lawyers, we’ll need new kind of expert that will be able to solve these problems. There will be redistribution of jobs. Many jobs today — like drone operators or 3-D printer managers or social media managers — they didn’t exist 10 years ago, 15 years ago. No doubt in 10, 15 years, there will be many jobs, maybe the best-paid jobs, that don’t exist today, and we don’t even know how these jobs will look. I think that’s natural. All we have to do is realize that this process is inevitable, and we have to prepare us mentally, but also to have some sort of safety cushions to help people that will have great difficulty in adjusting. People that come from manufacturing jobs, manufacturing-sector people that are older and don’t have the same knowledge of machines, and how to make sure that society will not be shaken badly by another dramatic shift in technology. Say more and more jobs are redistributed toward AI. It can be very daunting to work with artificial intelligence. So, with Deep Blue they had Joel Benjamin, who, as you know, is a very smart guy. Is our educational system up to the shift? And won’t it just mean the return to skilled labor keeps on rising and income distribution becomes less and less equal? Or do you think somehow we will adapt?…

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