John Markoff, veteran technology journalist and author, responds to host Sonal Chokshi regarding whether the distinction between artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction is an artificial dichotomy.
“I think that the AI community has a set of values that, that are about building systems that basically replicate human capabilities. That's their value set. And oftentimes, you know, in a, in an economic system where you can take labor out of the equation, that's the priority. I mean, it's called capitalism.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading:
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More from John Markoff
AssertionContradicted
Markoff: US productivity growth has been zero or negative since 2008
“Since 2008, you know, where you, The modern theory is capital's replacing labor. You should see that kind of productivity growth. We've seen no productivity growth. We've even seen negative productivity.”
John MarkoffJan 2, 2019▶ 12:32a16z Podcast | Talking Humans and Machines with NYT’s John Markoff
AssertionSupported
Markoff: Transistor costs have stopped falling for non-Intel semiconductor companies
“For most of the industry the cost of transistors has stopped falling. And so as you scale, this is everybody but Intel in the industry says this. You, if you talk to Broadcom, if you talk to Qualcomm, all of the customers of the foundries say, you know, going …”
John MarkoffJan 2, 2019▶ 18:58a16z Podcast | Talking Humans and Machines with NYT’s John Markoff
PredictionDidn’t hold up
Markoff predicts semiconductor scaling will permanently stop at 5 nanometers
“I believe, you know, based on talking to all the wise men I've been able to talk to in Silicon Valley, that there are three more turns of the crank. We go from 14 to 10 to seven to five. The industry can see its way to five.”
John MarkoffJan 2, 2019▶ 20:12a16z Podcast | Talking Humans and Machines with NYT’s John Markoff
AssertionContradicted
Markoff: Offshore call center jobs are returning to US data centers as software
“Because of falling cost of telecommunication, many of those jobs were outsourced to the Philippines and India. And now you have this Freakonomics reverse thing happening where those jobs are coming back to run in U.S. Data centers as software, not as U.S. Work…”
John MarkoffJan 2, 2019▶ 30:18a16z Podcast | Talking Humans and Machines with NYT’s John Markoff
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Markoff: AI historically overpromises and underperforms repeatedly
“AI as a field has failed many times. Really quite remarkable how it over promises and underperforms over a long time”
John MarkoffJan 2, 2019▶ 4:37a16z Podcast | Talking Humans and Machines with NYT’s John Markoff
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Markoff: Enterprise software and the internet hollowed out white-collar corporate jobs
“The arrival of the internet coupled with companies like SAP and PeopleSoft and Oracle and IBM who are re-engineering the white-collar clerk class inside, ah, corporations has caused this, you know, the evaporation of, the hollowing out of modern corporations.”
John MarkoffJan 2, 2019▶ 11:47a16z Podcast | Talking Humans and Machines with NYT’s John Markoff
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