Artificial Intelligence Will Benefit Us Immensely -- If We Don't Get In The Way

A NAO humanoid robot powered by International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) Watson technology sits on display at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on Monday, Feb. 22, 2016. Ideas are becoming more expensive. Larger teams of scientists are taking longer and spending more to discover less. A common theory for these diminishing returns compares exploring the laws of nature to exploring land. Later generations must grope their way across remote and forbidding terrain to find anything new; their expeditions need more preparation, more equipment, and more support. One of the many marks of increasing strain is the advancing age at which Nobel laureates reach their prize-winning breakthroughs.