Elon Musk lost his bid to derail OpenAI. Few will feel sorry for him.
Unless you are a corporate chieftain or a venture capitalist, you might want to take a moment, however, to feel sorry for yourself. The juggernaut of artificial intelligence bearing down on the world is probably not your friend.
If you are a clerk, a programmer, an administrator, a writer, an entry-level knowledge worker of any sort, you have already been warned that A.I. might replace you. Even if those worries prove overblown in the short term, the new technology could push down incomes.
The speedy collapse of Mr. Musk’s legal case on Monday will not slow down the juggernaut. If anything, it will speed up. With rising emotions around the country, this could be a long, hot A.I. summer.
A.I. critics dismissed the three-week trial in federal court in Oakland, Calif., as a power struggle between oligarchs that was of little concern to the masses. But it was also a rare glimpse into the seething maw of Silicon Valley as it makes a bid to transform, and possibly take over, the world.
As the A.I. industry likes to remind us, the stakes could not be higher. “The worst-case situation,” Mr. Musk pointed out in his trial testimony, is one where A.I. will “kill us all.”