- Hey I'm Becca with the Verge
and it seems like all I'm hearing about lately is.
- Artificial intelligence.
- It's all in about artificial intelligence.
- I think it's time we talk about AI.
(upbeat music)
Okay, I love my Google Assistant
and I even say goodnight to it.
Which is mildly embarrassing,
but I'm here for it because then it tells me
the weather for tomorrow and it 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 train is
gonna to 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 of as a marketing term.
Like I don't think we think that Siri is intelligent,
but then Google showed us this.
- 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 Vincent
and he's a reporter here at the Verge
that covers all things AI.
I wanted to know were AI is right now
and where it's going.
- So AI as a field is a term,
it's sort of an umbrella
and it includes lots of different types of AI
that kind of come into faction over the years
and then they test them, they get to the limitations
and they move on to the next one.
And the thing that's very much dominate
in the field at the 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 called 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 thanks to the internet
and thanks to cheaper chips.
- Okay James, real talk though.
Have you seen Terminator?
I mean how close are we to the Skynets of the world?
Like is that coming?
- It's not really.
I mean, so what you get in films, popular culture,
that is what's usually called
artificial general intelligence.
Which is a huge step forward
from what we got at the present moment.
So AI is a field, it was kind of founded
on this belief you could build computers
that were just humans essentially.
That just kind of thought like humans,
acted, reacted like humans,
and as it's gone on we've kind of realized
that oh wait 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 Mind's Alpha Go,
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 battled
against legendary Go player Lee Sedol
defeating him four to one.
And in 2017, Deep Mind retired the AlphaGo AI
after it defeated the world's best Go player, three to zero.
- But I'd 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 for 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 referring to common sense
we're referring to the whole range of capabilities
that humans have and computers just don't.
Dr. 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
for 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 cars 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 were it's going.
- These are still early days
and we should assess the exuberance people have
and some of the fears that they have
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 on the comments below
your favorite uses of AI so far.
What's helping you on your day to day?
And thanks for two million subscribers
that's hella cool and I'll see you next time.
- [Man] Bye.