>For instance, where do we widen a road? Absolutely an algorithmic problem.

Not to the people living on either side of it who stand to lose their homes. "Computer says yes" would be a political nightmare.

As long as you have people making the decisions you can have the comforting illusion that it may be possible to make them change their minds.

Replace the people with an AI and the comforting illusion disappears.

You'll have people taking to the streets with pitchforks to protest against tyranny in no time - even if the AI is much better at making intelligent decisions.

So if we don't widen roads because people might have to move then we get more accidents. Or the city can't grow. Or people sit in traffic for extra hours a day.

People's needs need to be taken into account, yes, that is what it is all about in the end.

But a few people's inconvenience or greed outweighing the general progress is not a long term formula for successful society.

That sounds like an awesome premise to a dystopian science fiction novel.

The point is we already live in that dystopian future. But it isn't machines running things. It's people fighting over scraps. I firmly believe the machines will do better.

So you understand what is coming, on some level. The question for us is how to best handle the transition.

Where to widen a road ceases to be an algorithmic problem when the algorithm decides to widen it into a neighborhood's front yards, and the homeowners take issue with that. It then becomes a political problem which AI is no better at solving than humans.

There are often hidden agendas in politics. The inscrutability of neural networks and these hidden agendas will make for interesting interactions.