The Surprising Path Of Artificial Intelligence

I read the following in a NY Post article last year by Google’s research chief Peter Norvig:

Forty years ago this December, President Nixon declared a war on cancer, pledging a “total national commitment” to conquering the disease. Fifty years ago this spring, President Kennedy declared a space race, promising to land a man safely on the moon before the end of the decade. And 54 years ago, Artificial Intelligence pioneer Herbert Simon declared “there are now in the world machines that think” and predicted that a computer would be world chess champion within 10 years.

Though we made it to the moon the efforts in cancer and artificial intelligence have failed in their larger ambitions but have made progress. In cancer:

Those hoping for a single “cure” were disappointed because cancer turned out to be not a single problem but a complex arrangement of inter-related problems on which we continue to make incremental progress.

Artificial intelligence turned out to be more like cancer research than a moon shot. We don’t have HAL 9000, C-3PO, Commander Data, or the other androids imagined in the movies, but A.I. technology touches our lives many times every day…