1985: Ray Kurzweil looks on as Stevie Wonder experiences the Kurzweil 250, the first synthesizer to accurately reproduce the sounds of the piano — replacing piano-maker jobs but adding many more jobs for musicians (credit: Kurzweil Music Systems)
Last week, Fortune magazine asked Ray Kurzweil to comment on some often-expressed questions about the future.
Does AI pose an existential threat to humanity?
Kurzweil sees the future as nuanced, notes writer Michal Lev-Ram. “A lot of people think things are getting worse, partly because that’s actually an evolutionary adaptation,” Kurzweil said. “It’s very important for your survival to be sensitive to bad news. … I think if you look at history, though, we’re being helped [by new technology] more than we’re being hurt.”
How will artificial intelligence and other technologies impact jobs?
“We have already eliminated all jobs several times in human history,” said Kurzweil, pointing out that “for every job we eliminate, we’re going to create more jobs at the top of the skill ladder. … You can’t describe the new jobs, because they’re in industries and concepts that don’t exist yet.”
Why are we so bad at predicting certain things? For example, Donald Trump winning the presidency?
Kurzweil: “He’s not technology.”
Read Fortune article here.