CogX 2018: How AI will teach itself to transform economy Internet of Business

As AI and robotics develop side by side, the medium-term future will see infant-like robots that can learn for themselves and crow-like machine intelligences that can teach themselves to use tools, claims a leading AI researcher. But their progress will go far beyond there. In 2018, most people are worried that AI and robotics might automate their jobs and leave them scrabbling in the gig economy for a regular wage. But one AI expert believes that the technologies' ambitions are much bigger than that: in the centuries ahead, AI and robots will "emigrate" from Earth and communicate with each other across the universe, he says. But long before then, general artificial intelligences will emerge that can be taught like human children, and which can teach themselves about how the world works through "power play" and "artificial curiosity", he said.