How To Design A Machine That's Smarter Than You

The biggest challenge with AI may be designing it. That's the implication of a study designed to last until 2116, called the "One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence." The Stanford-led project aims to report on the state of AI in our world every five years for the next century, as reported by a panel of two dozen experts--currently ranging from Julia Hirschberg, a pioneer of natural language processing, to Astro Teller, leader of Google's "moonshot" division. The first report, published online yesterday, reads a bit like a half-drawn map, a mix of observations, questions, and even warnings. First of all, "the panel found no cause for concern that AI is an imminent threat to humankind," which, phew.