question:  What does the author view as the purpose of AI
context: The Centre for the Future of Intelligence is seeking to investigate the implications of artificial intelligence for humanity, and make sure humans take advantage of the opportunities while dodging the risks. It is bringing together a diverse community of some of the world's best researchers, philosophers, psychologists, lawyers and computer scientists. Harry Armstrong, head of futures at Nesta, which publishes The Long + Short, spoke with Cave about the impact of AI. Stephen Cave: Thinking about the impact of AI is not something that any one discipline owns or does in any very systematic way. That means bringing together the technologists and the experts at developing these algorithms together with social scientists, philosophers, legal scholars and so forth. In that sense AI isn’t unique, but I think because thinking about AI is still in very early stages, we have an opportunity to shape the way in which we think about it, and build that community. The current dominant political and economic ideologies, along with growing isolationist sentiment, runs contrary to the bipartisan, collaborative approaches needed to solve global issues like climate change. With AI, that has been the case so far; although not on the same scale. AI companies, and in particular the big tech companies, are very concerned that this won't go like climate change, but rather it will go like GMOs: that people will have a gut reaction to this technology as soon as the first great swathe of job losses take hold. One of the dominant narratives around not only AI but technology and automation more generally is that we, as humans, are at the mercy of technological progress. Technology is emerging from a certain legal, political, normative, cultural, and social framework. One of the problems with intervention, generally, is that we cannot control the course of events. The reality is, societies are much too complex for us to be able to shape them in any very specific way, as plenty of ideologies and political movements have found to their cost.
output:  To amplify social improvement
options:  To eliminate natural selection  To achieve ultimate convenience  To amplify social improvement  To mitigate climate threats