The Future of AI and Why It Matters Now - DZone IoT

What it's about: If you've been looking for the latest indicator that machine learning and AI are about to burst out of the lab and into the mainstream, look no further: Rolling Stone, not exactly a must-read in the tech industry, is serving up a big two-part feature on "the artificial intelligence revolution." Part one went online this week, and it's well worth the read. Author Jeff Goodell dispenses with some of the entertainment and media tropes around AI--bow down before your robot overlords, and so on--in favor of what AI, like so much of modern software, is really all about: Algorithms. "Algorithms are to the 21st Century what coal was to the 19th Century: the engine of our economy and the fuel of our modern lives," Goodell writes. "In the world of AI, the Holy Grail is to discover the single algorithm that will allow machines to understand the world--the digital equivalent of the Standard Model that lets physicists explain the operations of the universe." Of course, no one's found that yet, and true AI isn't actually here yet: "AIs are nowhere near as smart as a rat," Facebook director of AI research Yann LeCun tells Goodell.