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People still prefer working with people
Why the gap exists
Several things explain the gap. AI is jagged: superhuman genius in some ways and a dumb toddler in others, and people have skills that complement it extremely well.
People also trust and enjoy working with other people. An AI consultant, an AI sales rep, or an AI engineer can be hired right now, and most people still seem to prefer interacting with a human.
Why human origin matters
Human values have value because they are human. People are deeply hardwired to care about people, so they care about what people care about. AI can make incredible images, yet people only want the ones created, or at least chosen, by a human. A reader of a novel wants to know about the person behind it.
The same applies to running a company. The world likely wants to know who is responsible for a company's decisions and who to hold accountable if they are bad, and it doesn't really want an AI CEO.
Why do new technologies change economies slowly?
Economist Paul David studied this in a 1990 paper called The Dynamo and the Computer. Electric power reached factories in the 1880s, but large productivity gains took until the 1920s. Early owners simply swapped electric motors in for steam engines inside layouts built around a central shaft. The big gains came when factories were redesigned around a motor at each machine.
Why do people prize human-made art more?
Psychologists George Newman and Paul Bloom reported in 2012 that people value originals partly because of a physical link to the creator, which they described as a kind of contagion. Their experiments found higher value for a work tied to the artist's own hands, even when a copy looked identical. Earlier, Justin Kruger and colleagues found in 2004 that people rated paintings and poems more highly when told the creator spent longer on them.
Why does chess still thrive after computers won?
IBM's Deep Blue beat world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, and today's engines play far stronger than any human. Even so, the human game kept its audience, and tournaments streamed online now show engine evaluations beside the players' moves. The title of world champion is still contested between humans, in a match run by the international chess federation FIDE.
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