Why Ambitious Predictions About A.I. Are Always Wrong

Since the very beginning of the computer revolution, researchers have dreamed of creating computers that would rival the human brain. Our brains are information machines that use inputs to generate outputs, and so are computers. How hard could it be to build computers that work as well as our brains? In 1954 a Georgetown-IBM team predicted that language translation programs would be perfected in three to five years. In 1965 Herbert Simon said that "machines will be capable, within twenty years, of doing any work a man can do."