The debate about AI swings between utopia and doom, but neither helps an ordinary person decide how to use it: the technology is a tool whose outcomes depend on how it is aimed, and it is already doing concrete good from accelerating medicine to restoring independence

The public conversation about artificial intelligence tends to swing between two unhelpful poles: the utopian promise that it will solve everything, and the dread that it will ruin us. Neither is much use to an ordinary person trying to decide how to actually…