Too often, public debate rewards dramatic predictions. Think tank gurus and activists win viral attention, warning that a new technology will destroy society, then sell their preferred policy as the only way to avert disaster. The more counterintuitive possibility, that innovation might strengthen workers and expand opportunity, rarely breaks through.

This distortion was on full display when the godfather of modern AI became so certain the machines had won that he urged us to stop training an entire specialty of physicians. In 2016, Geoffrey Hinton delivered the verdict as if it were settled science. “People should stop training radiologists now,” he said. Within five years, he predicted, computers would read medical scans better than any doctor alive. The humans were finished.