Can AI Systems Learn How to Learn?

Artificial intelligence machines are good at what they do, but how smart are they really? A supercomputer toppling a grandmaster at chess is old hat, with IBM's Deep Blue beating Garry Kasparov at the end of the last millennium. DeepMind's artificial intelligence system AlphaGo beat the world champion in 2016 at the even more complex Go -- and then AlphaGo Zero, which learned the game by teaching itself rather than by playing against humans, wiped the floor with AlphaGo. In recent years, AI systems, whether used in games, medical research or self-driving cars, have shown an extraordinary ability to learn and learn fast -- AlphaGo Zero defeated the version of AlphaGo that had beaten the world champ just three days after it started learning the game. See Hava Siegelmann discuss AI's role in national security at the Dec. 14 CXO Tech Forum.