18 AI researchers reveal the most impressive thing they've ever seen

"I think it's really cool, that people have gotten computer systems to learn to play games -- either against people or the same kinds of games that people play. The programs can do very well and their playing is actually very human-like. "The more recent example that's getting a lot of press is the Atari video game-playing program. They actually created a learning system that you can plug into a 1980s-era video game and it figures out how to play. On average, across a wide variety of games, it plays about as well as a really strong human video game player.