> The fact that a theory-free AI might demand far more cash to accomplish a task (even a "solved" one like playing chess) than an expert [helping with a symbolic AI] would charge is beside the point. Billionaires have money, they don't have expertise. Theory-free inference is a bid to substitute one for the other: the beauty and terror of being able to manipulate the world without studying or understanding it is that it can be done with money alone. No experts needed.
> In a world in thrall to financial power, expertise is the only substantial form of power that can reliably contest the power of wealth. [...] This is why AI bosses are so violently allergic to the idea of hybridizing [machine learning] AI with symbolic systems that operate on models of the world.