Computers Already Learn From Us. But Can They Teach Themselves?

Artificial intelligence seems to be everywhere, but what we are really witnessing is a supervised-learning revolution: We teach computers to see patterns, much as we teach children to read. But the future of A.I. depends on computer systems that learn on their own, without supervision, researchers say. When a mother points to a dog and tells her baby, "Look at the doggy," the child learns what to call the furry four-legged friends. But when that baby stands and stumbles, again and again, until she can walk, that is something else. Just as humans learn mostly through observation or trial and error, computers will have to go beyond supervised learning to reach the holy grail of human-level intelligence.