Photo: The Canadian Press

Should we be preparing for the coming invasion of job-stealing, career-crushing robots? It's a question that's moved from science-fiction novels to the tip of policy-makers' tongues.

Canadian and American policy-makers have just delivered very different answers.

Canada's finance minister tabled a budget that mentioned artificial intelligence and skills training dozens of times, with entire sections on each subject and $5.2 billion for worker re-training.

His U.S. counterpart: not so worried about a wave of job-killing automation.

"It's not even on our radar screen," U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told the Axios website last week. "(It's) 50-100 more years (away)... I'm not worried at all," he said, adding: "In fact, I'm optimistic."

The Trump administration's budget proposal didn't specifically mention skills, automation, or artificial intelligence a single time.

Silicon Valley reacted with swiftness and stupefaction. Some of the world's most famous tech billionaires are expressing alarm about rapid change approaching, starting with automation potentially wiping out millions of driving jobs.

The headlines in the tech press were scathing. Wired magazine wrote: "Hate to Break It to Steve Mnuchin, But AI's Already Taking Jobs." TechCrunch said: "Steve Mnuchin has been compromised (by robots)."

Jerry Kaplan, who lectures at Stanford University on the social, economic, and legal questions raised by AI, said: "I think Mnuchin’s comments regarding AI are ill-informed, an unfortunate hallmark of the new U.S. administration. He may not be concerned about it, but just about anyone who has a real job and does productive work should be."

Estimates of the job impact range broadly. While a famous Oxford study said almost half of human jobs were at risk of automation, a more granular-level McKinsey study suggested most jobs will still exist — but half of specific tasks will disappear within 20 to 50 years.