Artificial intelligence isn't as smart as it thinks

This article is part of a special report on artificial intelligence, The AI Issue. Digital personal assistants, software that can trounce board game champions, algorithms serving up customized online advertising -- wherever you turn, artificial intelligence appears to be taking over the world. But look past the self-driving cars and facial-recognition cameras, and you'll see that the technology is a lot less intelligent than it may at first appear. It's likely to be decades, at best, before even the smartest forms of AI can outdo humans in the complex tasks that make up daily life. "The real world is a complicated, messy place," said Michael Wooldridge, program co-director at the Alan Turing Institute, the United Kingdom's national center of excellence for data science and artificial intelligence.