Artificial Intelligence: Welcome to the Age of Disruptive Surprise

With the last few years of progress in artificial intelligence, it is hard to look forward without excitement…and apprehension. If you are paying attention at all, you are wondering what lies ahead. Will it be great? Will it be disastrous for many? Surely because we are inventing it, we have a good sense of what is being spawned? But no, this technology feels different. It almost feels like it is being discovered, rather than being invented. It will be big, it will impact our lives and our society. It will be disruptive…and we don’t know how.

I spent a career in intelligence learning the business of forecasting and warning, and I teach those things today. I learned that warning is easier than forecasting—usually you warn of vulnerabilities and possibilities, but you forecast likelihoods. Likelihoods are much harder to determine. On forecasting, I learned the hard way to be very humble. I learned that the word “probably” is overused…and the words “almost certainly” are rarely deserved when we are talking about anything over the horizon.