TIME100 AI Panelists Discuss AI’s Potential Impacts, for Better or Worse, on the Economy

Artificial intelligence could flatten your company hierarchy, improve global agriculture, and give you the perfect vacation. It could also leave you permanently jobless, destroy your region’s economy, and cause mass social upset.Those high-stakes defined the mood as panelists at the third annual TIME100 AI Impact Dinner grappled with the dilemmas of machine intelligence in San Francisco on Monday night.Chief among them: whether AI will cause mass job loss, a new jobs boom, or both at once.“At the beginning of the century, our company,” said Glenn Fogel, chief executive of travel conglomerate Booking Holdings, “had human translators, thousands of them. … How many human translators do you think we have today? I don’t know what they’re doing right now, but I feel bad. Their job is just no longer needed.” (Booking.com, which is part of Booking Holdings, was a sponsor of the event.)He also outlined his company’s vision for AI travel agents that can organize your vacation to suit your preferences and reorganize it on the fly if weather or delays throw a spanner in the works.Fogel was among the executives, innovators, storytellers, and activists gathered at the city’s Asian Art Museum to ...