Pumping the brakes on artificial intelligence could be the best thing we ever do for humanity.

“Computers need to be accountable to machines,” a top Microsoft executive told a roomful of reporters in Washington, DC, on February 10, three days after the company launched its new AI-powered Bing search engine.

Everyone laughed.

“Sorry! Computers need to be accountable to people!” he said, and then made sure to clarify, “That was not a Freudian slip.”

Slip or not, the laughter in the room betrayed a latent anxiety. Progress in artificial intelligence has been moving so unbelievably fast lately that the question is becoming unavoidable: How long until AI dominates our world to the point where we’re answering to it rather than it answering to us? Read More