Good morning.
We humans can get so emotional about AI—dazzled, afraid, frustrated, even disdainful that all those data centers and investment dollars have yet to shave hours off our workday. Overestimating the near term, underestimating the long term, Gartner’s latest “Hype Cycle for Artificial Intelligence” report already has us mired in disillusionment about cloud AI services.
And yet, as my colleague Jeremy Kahn writes so eloquently in his new book, Mastering AI, we’re clearly on the precipice of having our lives transformed by technology that can heighten or threaten the essence of who we are. As he told Fortune editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell at his book launch in New York last night, humans have long harnessed the power of animals and technologies that exceed our physical power. "We never really defined ourselves as a species based on brawn,” he said. AI, on the other hand, “challenges what makes us unique as a species, which is really our intelligence.”
