Artificial Intelligence - How Smart Is It?

Depending on who you talk to, artificial intelligence (AI) will either be the saviour or nemesis of mankind. Elon Musk, of PayPal, Tesla Cars and SpaceX (sometimes described as a real life Iron Man) has likened AI to "summoning a demon" – i.e. once it's truly here it can't be controlled. Meanwhile, Demis Hassabis (himself referred to as a superhero of AI), founder of DeepMind Technologies – a British AI start-up acquired by Google in 2014 for 400 million – is on a quest for what he calls "the meta-solution to any problem" through AI. Debate will rightly rage about the future of AI, but what about the now? Research and development (R&D) into artificial intelligence has been going on for decades.