What if Computers Become Smarter Than Humans? - Knowledge@Wharton

You're almost done when that annoying Captcha screen comes up and makes you type some blurry letters and numbers into a box. This step, as most people know, is to ensure that you're just a person buying tickets and not a computer program deployed to illicitly to grab up a bunch of seats. But why can't a computer that can perform calculations astronomically faster than humans identify the letter B just because it's in a fancy font with a strikethrough, or the number 5 in a fuzzy photo of a front door? Why is it so easily baffled by something the average second-grader can handle? The answer lies in understanding the current state of artificial intelligence (AI) -- what it's capable of, what is still beyond its grasp, and how we may be rocketing toward an increasingly intelligent technology without enough thought about the implications for ourselves and our planet.