The next big wave of automation came to light last week in a rather quiet way as a Google-owned computer system, Lee Sedol, a champion of one of the world’s most complex board games.  As the world of artificial intelligence continues to advance millions of jobs and ways of life are going to change.

Some 10 percent of all American jobs involve driving vehicles, and most all of them will be lost, said Moshe Y. Vardi, a professor of computational engineering at Rice University. “What are we going to do with these 3.5 million people?”

Christof Koch, president and Chief Scientific Officer at the Allen Institute for Brain Science warned  “This is a real issue of our time, and none of our politicians right now is even mentioning it.  I’m not sure anybody even knows about this, which is rather depressing.”

Miles Brundage, a doctoral student at Arizona State University who has been studying AlphaGo, believes the far more urgent need is a real and comprehensive examination of how society and its economy will function once artificial intelligence begins wiping out millions of jobs. [read more]