Gadgetory

hey I'm Mecca with the verge and it seems like all I'm hearing about lately is artificial intelligence artificial intelligence artificial intelligence it's all about artificial intelligence I think it's time we talk about AI okay I love my google assistant and I even say good night to it which is mildly embarrassing but I'm here for it because then it tells me the weather for tomorrow and it like plays cricket sounds which I think are actually helping me sleep better and it's also getting to know me right so it tells me when the trains gonna leave in the morning and it's even recommending songs I might like and for a long time companies have been pushing this off as artificial intelligence which I always thought it was a marketing term like I don't think we think that Siri is intelligent but then Google showed us this I'm looking for something on May 3rd that's the voice of Google assistant making calls for you this made me think that maybe artificial intelligence is closer to replicating human intelligence than I thought so I called James Anson and he's the reporter here at the verge that covers all things AI I wanted to know where AI is right now and where it's going so AI as a field as a term is it's an umbrella and it includes lots it if in types of AI that kind of come into fashion over the years and then they test them they gets the limitations and they move on to the next one and the thing that's you know very much dominant in the field of moment is machine learning which is all about giving a system a lot of data and then it goes through that data and it learns the patterns within it and then a flavor of machine learning is what's put deep learning deep learning is basically you know basically machine learning but it uses a lot of data and it uses a lot of computing power which we now have access to thanks to the internet and thanks to achieve chips okay James real talk though have you seen terminator I mean how close are we to the Skynet's of rural like I is that coming it's not really I mean so what you get in films popular culture that is what's you know usually called artificial general intelligence which is a huge step forward from what we've got at the present moment and so any I as a field was kind of founded on this belief that you could build you know computers that were just humans essentially that just kind of thought like humans acting reacted like humans and as it's gone on we've kind of realized that I'll wait no no this is a really difficult task and we're not near it basically so while Google duplex sounds very human it's actually what we call narrow AI now at the moment everything that's being sold to you as AI is narrow AI and it was built under a limited predetermined set of functions it pops up on your phone your Google home or your echo and it's how Facebook recognizes your face and automatically takes photos of you this form of AI is designed to complete very specific tasks and it's incapable of doing anything else now that doesn't mean it can't do impressive things take for example deep minds alphago which is an AI program trained to play the game go now go is like a strategy game sort of like chess except it has way more possible outcomes and in 2016 the AI system battle against legendary go player Lisa doe defeating him four to one and in 2017 deep minor tired the alphago AI after defeated the world's best go player three to zero I like to point out that this program alphago would continue playing go even if the building it was in was on fire even if the room was on fire that's dr. Oren Etzioni CEO of Allen Institute of artificial intelligence and professor at the University of Washington in Seattle it's an excellent symbol because it shows that in these very narrow very well structured tasks like a board game we can achieve superhuman performance but on things that are more nuanced things that have to do with language we are actually very far from even the abilities of a child so common sense could be thought of as the missing link between AI and AGI and when we're referring to come and sense we're referring to the whole range of capability that humans have and computers just don't doctor etzioni is one of many researchers that are working on programs to teach computers common sense but within the community there's a large debate over whether these smarter computers could be dangerous today narrow AI is being used to solve very real very serious problems like helping doctors diagnose cancer or predicting future weather disasters but it's also being used for things that people find worrying and that's understandable I mean these are things like facial recognition from mass surveillance or augmenting weapons which raises the question how if at all is AI going to be regulated this world evolves so rapidly that it's very hard to put these policies in place what I would suggest instead is that we identify applications of AI for example AI cards or AI weapons and that we define very careful regulations around those specific applications so yeah I was creeped out by Google duplex but it's nowhere near the AI we have in the movies this is very specific pointed AI and when that's applied to security or weapons it can be scary but all we can do is educate ourselves and be in the know about what AI we have right now and maybe where it's going these are still early days and we should assess the exuberance people have and be some of the fears that they have with with a note of caution and skepticism if you want to know what AI can really do and what it can't just have a chat with Siri and Alexa and you'll quickly see where reality stops and the hype begins hey thanks for watching let us know in the comments below your favorite uses of AI so far what's helping you in your day-to-day and thanks for 2 million subscribers that's hella cool and see you next time