We’re less concerned with how these tasks are accomplished, and more concerned with the outcome - generally measured in cost, speed and safety. This may an understandable oversight when we’re thinking about manufacturing, clerical work or even driving a car. The exchange was admittedly a bit tongue-in-cheek, but it revealed a blind-spot in the way we talk about the future of AI: in our tendency to ask whether or when a given task will be taken over by automation, it is easy to ignore the deeper issue of what such a takeover would mean.
I was once asked by a colleague in the Philosophy Department here at Stanford if robot musicians will ever exist, to which I replied that they may - someday - but only if we first figure out what it means to have robot philosophers.
