Deep Learning Isn't a Dangerous Magic Genie. It's Just Math

Deep learning is rapidly'eating' artificial intelligence. But let's not mistake this ascendant form of artificial intelligence for anything more than it really is. The famous author Arthur C. Clarke wrote, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." And deep learning is certainly an advanced technology--it can identify objects and faces in photos, recognize spoken words, translate from one language to another, and even beat the top humans at the ancient game of Go. Oren Etzioni is the CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and a computer scientist at the University of Washington.