Author: Science News Staff / Source: Science News
Artificial intelligence followed fauna, diagnosed disease, mapped the moon and more in 2018, Maria Temming reported in “Artificial intelligence is mastering a wider variety of jobs than ever before” (SN: 12/22/18 & 1/5/19, p. 25).
Online reader greg found the term “artificial intelligence” misleading.
“In reality what we call AI are merely classification algorithms,” greg wrote. “True AI may well never exist, we don’t have the first clue how to do it.”Temming acknowledges that the term might give people the wrong idea about what computers are actually doing. “Certainly AI algorithms don’t think like humans do,” she says. “But you also might be conflating two different levels of artificial intelligence.”
Artificial narrow intelligence is the AI that exists now. These systems are designed to mimic specific feats of human intelligence such as image recognition and game strategizing. “An A-list AI example would be AlphaGo, which is extremely good at the hardest board game ever, but nothing else,” Temming says. The second kind of AI is artificial general intelligence. “That AI would be able to solve any problem with human-level intelligence. We’re not there yet.”
2019: A space odyssey
In “2018 was a busy year in space” (SN: 12/22/18 & 1/5/19, p. 32), Lisa Grossman reported on missions…
The post Readers marvel at AI, space missions and wombat poop appeared first on FeedBox.