Not quite the end of the world as we know it, but artificial intelligence doesn’t feel fine

Artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t on the cusp of sentience, but its growing inscrutability and sway over us should still be cause for concern, writes Parmy Olson.

Mark Zuckerberg: Earlier this month, it emerged that Facebook would use more AI recommendations for people's newsfeeds. Picture: AP Photo/Eric Risberg

It has been an exasperating week for computer scientists. They’ve been falling over each other to publicly denounce claims from Google engineer Blake Lemoine, chronicled in a Washington Post report, that his employer’s language-predicting system was sentient and deserved all of the rights associated with consciousness.

To be clear, current artificial intelligence systems are decades away from being able to experience feelings and, in fact, may never do so.