“‘One of the reasons I don’t like the discussions about superintelligence is that they’re a distraction from what’s real,’ says Oren Etzioni, CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, who attended the conference. ‘As the poet said, have fewer imaginary problems and more real ones.’

At a time when the Trump administration is promising to make America great again by restoring old-school manufacturing jobs, AI researchers aren’t taking him too seriously. They know that these jobs are never coming back, thanks in no small part to their own research, which will eliminate so many other kinds of jobs in the years to come, as well. At Asilomar, they looked at the real US economy, the real reasons for the ‘hollowing out’ of the middle class. The problem isn’t immigration—far from it. The problem isn’t offshoring or taxes or regulation. It’s technology.”

Source: The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet. It’s the End of the Middle Class | WIRED