Don't Worry - AI Isn't Better Than Humans At Everything

The Economist recently published an irreverent piece about the one of the latest advancements in AI technology: assembling IKEA furniture. "Now that machines have mastered one of the most baffling ways of spending a Saturday afternoon," the magazine joked, "can it be long before AIs rise up and enslave human beings in the silicon mines?" Kidding aside, the article goes on to note that not only did these Singapore-based researchers train a robot to take care of a task that most of us would more than happily hand off, but that when it came down to brass tacks, the robot didn't actually perform the task all that well. "It took a pair of [IKEAbots], pre-programmed by humans, more than 20 minutes to assemble a chair that a person could knock together in a fraction of the time." Personally, I'd happily let the robot work at its own pace if it meant I didn't have to bother with a bunch of Allen keys and Swedish instructions.