[Epistemic Status: Open to being convinced otherwise, but fairly confident. 11 minute read.]

As interest in how artificial intelligence will change society increases, I’ve found it revealing to note what narratives people have about the future.

Some, like the folks at MIRI and OpenAI, are deeply worried that unsafe artificial general intelligences – an artificial intelligence that can accomplish anything a person can – represent an existential threat to humankind. Others scoff at this, insisting that these are just the fever dreams of tech bros. The same news organizations that bash any talk of unsafe AI tend to believe that the real danger lies in robots taking our jobs.

Let’s express these two beliefs as separate propositions:

1. It is very unlikely that AI and AGI will pose an existential risk to human society.
2. It is very likely that AI and AGI will result in widespread unemployment.

Can you spot the contradiction between these two statements? In the common imagination, it would require an AI that can approximate human capabilities to drive significant unemployment. Given that humans are the largest existential risk to other humans (think thermonuclear war and climate change), how could equally intelligent and capable beings, bound to subservience, not present a threat?

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Economists normally splits goods into four categories:

• Public goods are non-excludable (so anyone can access them) and non-rival (I can use them as much as I want without limiting the amount you can use them). Broadcast television, national defense, and air are all public goods.
• Common-pool resources are non-excludable but rival (if I use them, you will have to make do with less). Iron ore, fish stocks, and grazing land are all common pool resources.
• Private goods are excludable (their access is controlled or limited by pricing or other methods) and rival. My clothes, computer, and the parking space I have in my lease but never use are all private goods.
• Club goods are excludable but (up to a certain point) non-rival. Think of the swimming pool in an apartment building, a large amusement park, or cellular service.

Club goods are perhaps the most interesting class...

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[Epistemic Status: Written more harshly than my actual views for persuasive effect. I should also point out that all views expressed here are my own, not my employer's; when I'm hiring, my first commitment is complying with the relevant Federal, Provincial, and local legislation. My second commitment is to finding the best people. Ideology doesn't come into it. Serendipitously, I think everything I've argued for here helps me discharge both duties.]

In my capacity as a senior employee at Alert Labs (it’s easy to be senior when the company is only three years old), I do a lot of hiring. Since I started, I’ve been involved in interviews for four full time hires and five interns. Throughout all of this, I’ve learned a lot about what to look for in a resume.

I’ve also gotten in the occasional disagreement about what we should look...

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The Cambridge Analytica scandal has put tech companies front and centre. If the thinkpieces along the lines of “are the big tech companies good or bad for society” were coming out any faster, I might have to doubt even Google’s ability to make sense of them all.

This isn’t another one of those thinkpieces. Instead it’s an attempt at an analysis. I want to understand in monetary terms how much one tech company – Google – puts into or takes out of everyone’s pockets. This analysis is going to act as a template for some of the more detailed analyses of inequality I’d like to do later, so if you have a comment about methodology, I’m eager to hear it.

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