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ota[e86,jmc]	Responses to OTA questions

Q. What do you think should be the Federal role in anticipating the social
implications of AI?  What social implications do you think are the most
critical to anticipate?

A. There should be little if any Federal role in anticipating the social
implications of AI.  Above all there should be no attempt of establish
a Government position on these issues.  The reason is that the discussion
of AI would become yet another ideological battleground between those who
want the power to control technological progress and those who oppose anyone
having this power.

In its present state, AI is just another technology with some potential
to increase productivity, make human life easier and make defense cheaper.
Human level AI will revolutionize society, but we don't have and can't
soon get a clear idea of what form it will take.  Moreover, it is not
reasonable to ask political authorities to pay much attention to issues
that won't arise until there is a scientific breakthrough.  Imagine that
some organization had asked candidates Reagan and Mondale for policy
statements on AI during the 1984 campaign.  If their advisers were
smart enough they would have ignored the request.  If slightly less smart,
they would have asked a speech writer to prepare a bland statement saying,
``AI is an important technology with great future potential.  We must
think about it carefully''.  If not smart at all, the third assistant
speech writer would have read two books and three magazine articles
and produced a policy statement.  If the country were unfortunate enough
to have that candidate elected, all sorts of foolishness might have
ensued.