Will Artificial Intelligence Solve All Problems?

Every time a fancy new technology appears on the horizon, the experts emerge from the firmament to assure us that it will solve every human problem in the future. And they always advocate that it be made the core of government policy, thus fixing all the problems with government that everyone has known from all ages. The constant invocation of AI as the future solution to all problems is getting extremely annoying. Can you imagine a world in which AI demands that your favorite local watering hole needs to shut? Jeffrey A. Tucker says hecan easily imagine it and he can also imagine media citing AI as the final authority such that no human arguments can get in the way.

- Jeffrey A. Tucker

The famed historian and epidemiologist John M. Barry just threw out a trope that has become unbearably popular today. He predicted that in the future, artificial intelligence (AI) will make it possible to more perfectly enact pandemic lockdowns and develop vaccines.

“Artificial intelligence will perhaps be able to extrapolate from mountains of data which restrictions deliver the most benefits—whether, for example, just closing bars would be enough to significantly dampen spread— and which impose the greatest cost,” he writes. “AI should also speed drug development.”

Maybe if you are an expert in anything these days and write in The New York Times, this is just what you say today to seem hip and with it, even if you have no idea what you are talking about. That’s the most likely reason. Even so, this constant invocation of AI as the future solution to all problems is getting extremely annoying.

Can you imagine a world in which AI demands that your favorite local watering hole needs to shut? I can easily imagine it. I can also imagine local media citing AI as the final authority such that no human arguments can get in the way.

There is nothing new under the sun. Every time a fancy new technology appears on the horizon, the experts emerge from the firmament to assure us that it will solve every human problem in the future. And they always advocate that it be made the core of government policy, thus fixing all the problems with government that everyone has known from all ages. Thanks to this brilliant thing, it will be different this time.

This is exactly what happened with computers, starting in the mid-1950s once they became available. The new claim was everywhere: Computers would make the central planning called socialism possible. This claim was conjured up as an answer to an intractable problem that had vexed intellectuals since the 1920s.