The boring truth about AI

New technologies introduce new risks, yet life goes on.

Experts who warn that artificial intelligence poses catastrophic risks on par with nuclear annihilation ignore the gradual, diffused nature of technological development. As I argued in my 2008 book, The Venturesome Economy , transformative technologies—from steam engines, aeroplanes, computers, mobile telephony, and the internet to antibiotics and mRNA vaccines—evolve through a protracted, massively multiplayer game that defies top-down command and control.