AI Can Pass Standardized Tests--But It Would Fail Preschool

Artificial intelligence researchers have long dreamed of building a computer as knowledgeable and communicative as the one in Star Trek, which could interact with humans in natural (i.e., human) language. Last week, we seemed to boldly go toward that ideal. The New York Times reported that a team at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) had achieved "an artificial-intelligence milestone." AI2's program, Aristo, not only passed but also excelled on a standardized eighth-grade science test. The machine, the Times heralded, "is ready for high school science. Melanie Mitchell is professor of computer science at Portland State University and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Her book Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans will be published in October by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Aristo isn't the first AI system to shine on a test designed to gauge human knowledge and reasoning abilities. In 2015 one system matched a 4-year-old's performance on an ...