For those of us yet to grasp the scale of the potential for artificial intelligence to permeate every aspect of our lives, futurologist Martin Ford offers the analogy of electricity. It’s a big claim, because here at the dawn of the digital revolution electricity is a ubiquitous general purpose technology that has matured to support the basic needs of virtually everyone on the planet. But the comparison has merit, says Ford in ‘Rule of the Robots: How Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Everything’ (Hachette, £20, ISBN 9781529346015), if only because it offers insight into how much it’s going to change our lives.
It’s also a flawed idea, he admits, because while electricity is universally seen as an agent for good, the same cannot be said of the algorithms that inevitably have the power to invade our privacy, make our jobs redundant, throw us in prison, launch weapons against us and arm cyber-terrorists. Unlike electricity – that took centuries to...