Editor’s letter
The AI vs. human score this week was roughly 1-1. A tie, sort of. On the one hand, the poor lawyer who decided to rely on AI to write a brief in the case of a man hit by an airline serving cart was laughed out of court and now must defend his law license (see Business news, p.32). On the other, a blue-ribbon group of tech leaders said that the growth of AI poses the risk of “extinction” for humanity (see The U.S. at a glance, p.7). Between these two poles—“let’s dunk on the stupid computers” and “here come the robot overlords”—lies our likely future. I’m betting against humanity’s imminent demise. For one thing, it’s been a longtime Silicon Valley obsession—the theory that we haven’t met space aliens because…