Dr. AI or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Economics · Issue 1.1, Summer 2019

It is a pleasure to be participating in this wide-ranging discussion of issues of such importance to modern life. Given that much of the recent public discussion around AI has had the flavor of far-out science fiction, I hope that thinkers of all kinds, particularly those in the media, will find food for thought in the near-term, sober perspectives that appear here. Parenthetically, I do not dismiss the importance of far-out science fiction in allowing humans to muse upon potential long-term consequences of current technology. There is, however, a need to return to the current century, where information technology is having a profound, exciting, and sometimes pathological effect on society, culture, and individual human lives. What do we want out of the technology of our era? With my phrase "human-imitative AI," I had hoped to circumscribe some of the themes that have dominated public discussion, pulling them aside momentarily and allowing a focus on other kinds of intellectual, techno

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• Blake Elias