Understanding the Black Box Problem of Artificial Intelligence

While artificial intelligence (AI) applications are becoming increasingly capable of solving even the most complex of our problems requiring human-like cognition, the black box of artificial intelligence makes it difficult for us to understand how these systems actually go about solving these problems. Although humans had always known about the existence of fire, it was only when we learned to control or "tame" fire that we really kickstarted the journey of rapid technological progress and evolution we currently find ourselves in. Now, over a million years later, we find ourselves at a similar juncture--albeit faced with an entity that we created instead of a natural phenomenon. The creation of artificial intelligence, undoubtedly, is a step into an era of unprecedented growth unlike any we've seen before. But, a true leap can only be achieved once we "tame" the technology, as it were, by first illuminating the black box of artificial intelligence that will enable us to better control the outcomes affected by the technology.