Pedro Domingos so memorably put it, “People worry that computers will get too smart and take over the world, but the real problem is that they’re too stupid and they’ve already taken over the world.”

We should be afraid. Not of intelligent machines. But of machines making decisions that they do not have the intelligence to make. I am far more afraid of machine stupidity than of machine intelligence. Machine stupidity creates a tail risk. Machines can make many many good decisions and then one day fail spectacularly on a tail event that did not

Since the 1950s, discussions about AI have largely revolved around a big, tantalizing question: What can machines do, and where might they hit a wall? Will they ever truly think, understand, or maybe even become conscious? Could they reach the so-called “heights of human intelligence”? And then there’s that shadowy question looming in the backgroun

The potential threat of superintelligence is not down to the intelligence of the machines. It’s down to our own stupidity, our intelligence being blinded by our arrogance, greed and political agendas.