"If you keep up with the headlines, you know computers are taking our jobs. Spying on us. Controlling what we buy and who we vote for. Even discriminating against us. When they're done beating us at our own pastimes, maybe they'll rise up and kill us. Our relationship with these machines has become, not to put a fine point on it, dysfunctional."
That's how Michael Littman starts Code to Joy, his book that suggests everybody should learn a little about programming.
People don't need to learn how to be coders but we'd benefit if we found out a few things in order to let the computer work for us, he said.
Littman said artificial intelligence can aid in the simplification of computer programming. It's a good match, regardless, he said. "We come prewired to teach. Computers come prewired to learn."
Littman, a computer science professor at Brown University, would like to see us go from a world where only professionals program to one where nearly everyone programs.
Littman sees positive results already. "Customizable questionnaires, web pages, and video games are out there now that allow people to write small amounts of code and get large benefits in terms of tailoring the computer's behavior to their goals," he noted.
"Word processors and spreadsheets provide scripting languages and macros that let you streamline your workflow. Entities like Google and Amazon are privately talking about giving people more control over how recommendations are made on their behalf, making it less about the machine reading our passive intentions and more about you asserting your will," stated Littman.
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