Two of the most polarising words in the English language at the moment (aside from “Donald Trump”) must be “artificial intelligence”. Last week, Big Tech ramped up a campaign intended to convince people that robots will not take their jobs.
Executives from Intel and Tesla testified in a House subcommittee meeting on the challenges of AI, dismissing many public concerns. Others including Google chief economist Hal Varian gave interviews pushing the idea that AI is the labour solution to shrinking birth rates in rich countries.
Yet, this charm offensive coincided with a series of events that cast a different light on the tech industry. The most notable being the revelations, following the justice department indictment of 13 Russians and three companies, of the extent to which Facebook and other tech platforms were used to undermine the 2016 US presidential elections. That came after a 60-year-old taxi driver in New York shot himself in front of City Hall, in despair over the structural shifts in his industry. His suicide prompted New York mayor Bill de Blasio to revive a failed effort to regulate Uber.