Highlights from this piece:

• It’s tempting to argue that AI is simply technology by a different name. Just as we designed the cotton gin, so we designed accounting software, and automated manufacturing, and now AI.
• U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin's comment dismissing effect of AI on job elimination for the next 50 years is disturbing; the obsession of so many technologists with Artificial General Intelligence is just as frustrating since we really have no clear path to General AI from the state of AI Research right now; at the same time, Narrow AI is poised to replace white collar jobs over the next 50 years.
• Computers far more intelligent than any human will kill us all. But we should be concerned about the imminent creation of a world that makes huge swathes of people redundant. How many will care if artificial intelligence destroys life if it has already destroyed meaning?