 Which of these does Stephen think is a strong benefit of AIs in jobs?
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. Because no single discipline is ideally suited to this task, the centre emphasises the importance of interdisciplinary knowledge-sharing and collaboration. 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. So I think there is anxiety in the tech industry that there could be a serious reaction against this technology at any point. And that a broad buy-in by society into some kind of vision of the future in which this technology plays a role is required, if a dangerous – or to them dangerous – counteraction is to be avoided. 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. For example, routineness and susceptibility to automation are not inevitable features of occupations, job design is hugely important. Technology is emerging from a certain legal, political, normative, cultural, and social framework. These things are within the realms of what is feasible, and I think will help to shape the future. One of the problems with intervention, generally, is that we cannot control the course of events.
 To let people spend their time in jobs doing things they want to do
 They are an easy way to keep an eye on employees to make sure they are doing what needs to be done  To automate a lot of reports and make communication easier  To let people spend their time in jobs doing things they want to do  They can support employees with disabilities who have to do a lot of tech work