A beautiful brAIn

People worry that computers will get too smart and take over the world, but the real problem is that they’re too stupid and they’ve already taken over the world. So says Pedro Domingos, a leading artificial intelligence (AI) researcher. AI has enabled technologies previously thought to be decades away, such as life-like robotics, super-human game playing, and autonomous vehicles. I will briefly introduce how AI works, illustrate examples when it really doesn't work, and explain how my research is helping humans cope with artificial stupidity.

Artificial Intelligence or AI has always excited the popular imagination, as a solution to most of humanity's problems or the cause of our impending doom. In the real world, AI had a difficult relationship with society, starting with great promises of the '60s, failing deliver by the end of the 20th Century. Recently, a quiet resurgence has been taking place with AI applications are popping up all over the place. Just to name a few: enabling face recognition on social networks, self driving cars, and smart personal assistants that reside in connected speakers.

While traditional robots follow pre-established lines of commands to build and assemble products, artificially intelligent robots adapt these lines of commands to changes in the environment. Why shouldn't we fear the possibility of these very same lines deciding to go rogue and abandon us? We built a robot capable of making robots. So far, our robot has created more than 500 other robots, and our robot-building robot shows that the answer to the previous question is quite simple.