"The one sure prediction : All predictions will be proven wrong"

Prof. Henry Kautz

Said : Prof. Henry Kautz - Chair of the Department of Computer Science and Director of the Rochester Data Science Institute at the University of Rochester - speaking on the impact of AI on society during the IJCAI-13, the Twenty-third International Conference on Artificial Intelligence held in Beijing, China from August 3-9, 2013.

According to Kautz's presentation, technology is shaping society… by making it fatter. He presented a slide showing the rapid rise in the rate of obesity, especially in the technologically developed countries. 

"We are remarkably bad at predicting the form technology will take, and how it will change our lives. We rarely envision the actual as even one of the possible futures," he said in relation to being pessimistic about predicting the future. "Future must be almost upon us before we can see it coming providing us a short window to act to change the outcome," he added.

Kautz illustrated several pros and cons if Artificial Intelligence (AI) was achieved. He concluded showing the following slide.