Our society makes a huge investment developing machine-intelligence technology, but practically very little thought and investment in thinking about the consequences.
Agreed. IMO it has to do with rewards. If you replace workers (and their wages and benefits) with a robot, the reward is immediate. However, the reward for thinking about the consequences is distant, and ill-defined. This is why we are on a one-way street to severe climate change, right? It seems the only way that we can deal with these issues is through a kind of central planning, but history has plenty examples of how that can go awry. We are too short-sighted to plan ahead as individuals, and too ignorant to plan ahead as leaders. Maybe we can ask the machines to plan for us? An alternative might be to attach philosophers and ethicists to Senate and Congressional committees, and at they very least, allow them to attach commentary on legislation, giving a moral perspective that the public can center discussions upon.