There will still be jobs in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Washington

THE world has no shortage of pressing issues. There are 1.6 billion people living in acute poverty; an estimated 780 million adults are illiterate. Serious problems are not confined to the developing world: "deaths of despair", for example, are raising mortality among white males in the United States. Even when advanced economies grow, they are not lifting all boats. Higher-income groups thrive while lower-income households and minority groups are consistently left behind.

And now some analysts suggest that new forms of computer programming will compound these developments, as algorithms, robots and self-driving cars destroy middle-class jobs and worsen inequality. Even the summary term for this technology, Artificial Intelligence (AI), sounds ominous. The human brain may be the "most c…