--- title: Don't Be Afraid of the Future of Artificial Intelligence description: Artificial intelligence is one of the hottest, least understood and most debated technological breakthroughs in modern times. canonical: https://time.com/5087385/why-you-shouldnt-be-afraid-of-artificial-intelligence/ author: Lili Cheng article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-01-04T11:11:41.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:53:47.388Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Don't Be Afraid of the Future of Artificial Intelligence og:description: Artificial intelligence is one of the hottest, least understood and most debated technological breakthroughs in modern times. og:url: https://time.com/5087385/why-you-shouldnt-be-afraid-of-artificial-intelligence/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9503920e327aa305/6988f641bc6cfc6f433e47aa/optimist-issue-dont-be-afraid-of-artificial-intelligence.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3040 og:image:height: 1710 og:image:alt: optimist-issue-dont-be-afraid-of-artificial-intelligence og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Don't Be Afraid of the Future of Artificial Intelligence twitter:description: Artificial intelligence is one of the hottest, least understood and most debated technological breakthroughs in modern times. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9503920e327aa305/6988f641bc6cfc6f433e47aa/optimist-issue-dont-be-afraid-of-artificial-intelligence.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Why You Shouldn't Be Afraid of Artificial Intelligence > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Inside TIME: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Inside TIME is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. A closer look at TIME's latest cover and our most compelling stories. Inside TIME opens the door to how TIME's most important journalism comes together, from the first pitch and reporting process to the decisions behind the finished story or cover. Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs takes readers inside the newsroom, revealing the journalists, ideas and editorial choices behind the stories shaping the global conversation. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ## Video: Bill Gates on Healthcare [Watch (HLS stream): Bill Gates on Healthcare](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/YxMNctaW.m3u8) (2:58)  _Published 2018-01-04. Nancy Gibbs sits down with guest-editor Bill Gates to discuss advances in healthcare._ by [Lili Cheng](https://time.com/author/lili-cheng/) ## Lili Cheng Jan 4, 2018 11:11 AM UTC  Alexander the friendly robot visits the Indoor Park to interact with children by telling classic fairy tales, singing and dancing at Westfield London on August 10, 2016 in London, England. Alexander the friendly robot visits the Indoor Park to interact with children by telling classic fairy tales, singing and dancing at Westfield London on August 10, 2016 in London, England. Jeff Spicer—Getty Images by [Lili Cheng](https://time.com/author/lili-cheng/) ## Lili Cheng Jan 4, 2018 11:11 AM UTC [Artificial intelligence](http://time.com/4967348/hollywood-artificial-intelligence-movies-tv/) is one of the hottest, least understood and most debated technological breakthroughs in modern times. In many ways, the magic of AI is that it’s not something you can see or touch. You may not even realize you are using it today. When your Nest thermostat knows how to set the right temperature at home or when your phone automatically corrects your grammar or when a [Tesla car navigates a road autonomously](http://time.com/5079848/elon-musk-tesla-model-twitter-pickup-truck/)–that’s AI at work. For most of our lives, people have had to adapt to technology. To find a file on a computer, we input a command on a keyboard attached to one particular machine. To make a phone call, we tap an assortment of numbers on a keypad. To get a piece of information, we type a specific set of keywords into a search engine. AI is turning that dynamic on its head by creating technologies that adapt to us rather than the other way around–new ways of interacting with computers that won’t seem like computing at all. Computer scientists have been working on AI technologies for decades, and we’re now seeing that work bear fruit. Recent breakthroughs, based on computers’ ability to understand speech and language, and have vision, have given rise to our technology “alter ego”–a personal guide that knows your habits and communication preferences, and helps you schedule your time, motivate your team to do their best work, or be, say, a better parent. Those same achievements have divided leading voices inside the world of technology about the potential pitfalls that may accompany this progress. Core to the work I do on conversational AI is how we model language–not only inspired by technical advances, but also by insight from our best and brightest thinkers on the way people use words. To do so, we revisit ideas in books, such as Steven Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought, that give us closer looks at the complexity of human language, which combines logical rules with the unpredictability of human passion. Humanity’s most important moments are often those risky interactions where emotion comes into play–like a date or a business negotiation–and people use vague, ambiguous language to take social risks. AI that understands language needs to combine the logical and unpredictable ways people interact. This likely means AI needs to recognize when people are more effective on their own–when to get out of the way, when not to help, when not to record, when not to interrupt or distract. The advances that AI is bringing to our world have been a half-century in the making. But AI’s time is now. Because of the vast amounts of data in our world, only the almost limitless computing power of the cloud can make sense of it. AI can truly help solve some of the world’s most vexing problems, from improving day-to-day communication to energy, climate, health care, transportation and more. The real magic of AI, in the end, won’t be magic at all. It will be technology that adapts to people. This will be profoundly transformational for humans and for humanity. _Cheng is a corporate vice president of Microsoft AI & Research_ ## Transcript You've focused on health at the outset when you and Melinda were launching your foundation. Our global health work has exceeded our expectations. Its been amazing that you can make vaccines cheap, you can get them out to more children. The achievement of childhood survival is one on the The most amazing human achievements. And what turned out to be harder than you bargained for? Well in health, HIV was a huge crisis when we got into this. The soonest we get a vaccine, is probably eight years from now. And so that's been far more difficult than we expected, and we need innovation which I know will come but it's been slower than we've hoped for. Investing in the health and wellbeing of people in a poor country pays dividends far beyond that country's borders. You've been very outspoken about The importance of foreign aid as not just on moral grounds but practical economic, national security grounds. What's the argument you made to the unemployed worker in Ohio about why this is money that the government should be spending? Well, the development need we provide helps. Stabilized the world and lift these countries up so they can be self- sufficient. And our aid is less than 1 % to the US budget. The payback to US foreign aid, getting rid of small pox, on the verge of getting rid of polio. Lifting countries like South Korea, there was a huge [ UNKNOWN ] up. So now it's a substantial, a donor. The impacts have been phenomenal. Well, you also touched on, about keeping epidemics in check before they spread. Of all the major bad things, That could happen, a nuclear war, asteroid, trogonicus quid, the one that's the most scary is the big epidemic, helping poor countries so they would detect it early and they would have the capacity to stop it when the numbers are very very small, is advantageous to the entire world In the case of Ebola, because it wasn't caught early, the U. S. had to spend a lot of money, including deploying the U. S. military, lots of CDC people went in and did heroic work. So it's a big success, but there will be many more like that that could be worse, that is the speed of infection Of a flu is 20 times faster than Ebola. So it could go global if you took this long to figure out what was going on, as we did with Ebola. So it's an investment for the world that prevents pandemics coming to the United States. 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