First Person: A conversation with Jeff Dean, senior fellow at Google Research

For example, Dean's affinity for cats comes in handy with his line of work. In this context, cats are a mere vehicle for determining how much a computer can see, learn, communicate and understand. It also turns out that machines and humans are complementary in skills. While some computers are capable of beating a human opponent in a game such as Go, it's challenging for the same computers to perform more interpretive functions such as identifying and describing images. On the other hand, humans (and cats) are challenged by performing algorithmic functions on large sets of data, a task at that machines excel at.