“The Simple Economics of Machine Intelligence”

This piece in the Harvard Business Review has a four-part argument, with a cautiously optimistic conclusion:

1. Machine intelligence is essentially about prediction.
2. As the price of such prediction drops, demand for it will go up.  (for example, making predictions about very early-stage diseases)
3. The ‘complement’ (in economic terms) of prediction is judgment — something done by humans.
4. Thus, as demand for prediction rises, demand for human judgment will also rise.  For example, the demand for decisions about medical treatment for diseases that are detected at an early stage will rise.
5. Overall, then, the role of such ‘complements’ to AI might mean that the rise of machine intelligence will be good for human employment prospects.