New Delhi, Sept. 30 -- Every time we have been exposed to new technologies, we have worried about how they will change our lives. And yet history has shown that we usually overestimate the disruption in the short term and underestimate it in the long term. Today, we stand at the threshold of the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution.

As before, worries about how this new technology will affect us-at work and play-are already the subject of debate and discussion. But if, like all other technologies that came before it, the immediate short-term disruption will eventually make way for benefits over the long term, should we simply bide our time? Or is AI somehow different?

When the mechanical loom decimated the handloom industry, it unlea...