Wise up, deep learning may never create a general purpose AI

In August 2015, a number of carefully selected Facebook users in the Bay Area discovered a new feature on Facebook Messenger. Known as M, the service was designed to rival Google Now and Apple's Siri. A personal assistant that would answer questions in a natural way, make restaurant reservations and help with Uber bookings, M was meant to be a step forward in natural language understanding, the virtual assistant that – unlike Siri – wasn't a dismal experience. Fast forward a couple of years, and the general purpose personal assistant has been demoted within Facebook's product offering. Poor M. The hope was that it would tell users jokes and act as a guide, life coach and optimisation tool.