Daniel Kahneman: ‘Clearly AI is going to win. How people are going to adjust is a fascinating problem’ | Science and nature books | The Guardian

You end your book with some ideas for eliminating noise, creating checklists for decision making, having “designated decision observers” and so on. I was reminded of those studies that show how corporate efforts to reduce unconscious racial and gender bias through compulsory training have been either ineffective or counter-productive. How do you take account of such unforeseen consequences?There is always a risk of that. And those ideas you mention are largely untested but, we think, worth considering. Others in the book are founded on more experience, are more solid.Do you feel that there are wider dangers in using data and AI to augment or replace human judgment?There are going to be massive consequences of that change that are already beginning to happen. Some medical specialties are clearly in danger of being replaced, certainly in terms of diagnosis. And there are rather frightening scenarios when you’re talking about leadership. Once it’s demonstrably true that you can have an AI that has far better business judgment, say, what will that do to human leadership?Are we already seeing a backlash against that? I guess one way of understanding the election victories of Trump and Johnson is as a reaction against an increasingly complex world of information – their appeal is that they are simple impulsive chancers. Are we likely to see more of that populism?I have learned never to make forecasts. Not only can I certainly not do it – I’m not sure it can be done. But one thing that looks very likely is that these huge changes are not going to happen quietly. There is going to be massive disruption. The technology is developing very rapidly, possibly exponentially. But people are linear. When linear people are faced with exponential change, they’re not going to be able to adapt to that very easily. So clearly, something is coming… And clearly AI is going to win [against human intelligence]. It’s not even close. How people are going to adjust to this is a fascinating problem – but one for my children and grandchildren, not me.Your own life began in even more extreme uncertainty – as a boy in occupied France: your father was first arrested by the Nazis as a Jew, then spared and your family escaped into hiding. How much of your lifelong interest in these questions – the need to understand human motivations – was rooted in those anxieties and fears do you think?When I look back, I think I was always going to be a psychologist. I had curiosity from a really early age about how the mind works. I don’t think that my personal history had much to do with it though, it was always there.Do you feel that you’re fundamentally still the child that you were when you were six or seven?Yes. There’s certainly a continuity. I can still recognise something within myself.

Quelle: Daniel Kahneman: ‘Clearly AI is going to win. How people are going to adjust is a fascinating problem’ | Science and nature books | The Guardian