Human curiosity will see us through the AI revolution

Every time we have been exposed to new technologies, we have worried about how they will change our lives.

- RAHUL MATTHAN

And yet history has shown that we usually overestimate the disruption in the short term and underestimate it in the long term. Today, we stand at the threshold of the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution. As before, worries about how this new technology will affect us—at work and play—are already the subject of debate and discussion. But if, like all other technologies that came before it, the immediate short-term disruption will eventually make way for benefits over the long term, should we simply bide our time? Or is AI somehow different?

When the mechanical loom decimated the handloom industry, it unleashed a textile boom that made clothing cheaper and more widely available. Even though the sewing machine ended bespoke hand-stitched tailoring, it democratized fashion and gave rise to ready-to-wear clothing. Electric street lights put lamp lighters out of a job but also ended the tyranny of darkness, letting us pack more into our days. Electricity was a general-purpose technology that destroyed more traditional ways of working than anything that had come before it, creating new industries that couldn't have existed before.