Artificial intelligence is playing strategy games, writing news articles, folding proteins, and teaching grandmasters new moves in Go. Some experts warn that as we make our systems more powerful, we’ll risk unprecedented dangers. Others argue that that day is centuries away, and predictions about it today are ridiculous. The American public, when surveyed, is nervous about automation, data privacy, and “critical AI system failures” that could end up killing people.

How do you grapple with a topic like that?

Two new books both take a similar approach. Possible Minds, edited by John Brockman and published last week by Penguin Press, asks 25 important thinkers — including Max Tegmark, Jaan Tallinn, Steven Pinker, and Stuart Russell — to each contribute a short essay on “ways of looking” at AI. 

I was intrigued, fascinated, and alarmed in turn by the takes on AI from these researchers, many of whom have laid the very foundations of the field’s triumphs today...