Why Is Kevin Kelly Optimistic About AI?

Kevin Kelly is optimistic about AI because he thinks our capacity to solve problems is larger than we think, even though the problems themselves are real. A co-founder of Wired Magazine, he calls himself a radical optimist. New technologies produce the biggest problems we have ever seen, and AI, the most powerful thing we have made, will make the most powerful problems we have ever had. There will be a lot of problems, and we will solve them with better technology.

He focuses on the most positive, best-case version for a particular reason. The paths where AI goes wrong are many, frequent, and easy. The path where everything goes right is narrower and harder to navigate, and we cannot reach it by accident. We have to imagine it first, imagine the details, and then believe we can make them. When every Hollywood movie treats AI as bad news, and the only story is that machines are going to kill you, the good outcome stays harder to reach. An alternative story makes the better future much more likely.