CERN: The gulf between machine learning and AI TheINQUIRER

LAST WEEK The INQUIRER travelled to CERN in Switzerland to see the Large Hadron Collider and learn more about the IT that makes particle physics tick. In the first of our reports from the legendary laboratory we talk to professor Michael Feindt, former CERN researcher and founder of Blue Yonder, the predictive analytics software that spun out of CERN and that still powers some of its work. Predictive analytics is a form of machine learning. Professor Feindt's work uses neural networks, a term that conjures up images of the type of domesticated synthetic intelligences that have been such a hit for Channel 4 with its sci-fi drama Humans. However, although machine learning is advancing, it's a long way from the artificial intelligence (AI) we imagine.