Human Beings as Air Gap

Everyone appears to be rattling sabers about AI being the next big threat (where "Everyone" = Bill Gates & Elon Musk, and a bunch of other people whose names are not generally well known). I think they're way smarter than me, and probably have nothing to add to that particular conversion.

However, one thing I caught today that I loved was the comment from the Netflix head of content that "The Netflix Engine" is "70% tech and 30% human." This is exactly right! I think that machines will (for some time, anyway) really struggle with that last mile and not falling into the "uncanny valley". This is exactly where humans can excel! Imagine you have a car production line, and need to finish putting in the very fine gear shift handle. You can either build a robot that has the sensitivity to not break an egg, but also handle spot welding the engine block, or you can focus the robot on the hard stuff, and give a human being the last little bit. I think we'll see humans continue to manage this last mile for a long time; it's so much easier than handling the 1% case with a general purpose bot.