Artificial intelligence not even close to humanlike thought

In January, Google's chief executive, Sundar Pichai, claimed in an interview that AI "is more profound than, I dunno, electricity or fire." Day-to-day developments, though, are more mundane. Recently Pichai stood onstage in front of a cheering audience and proudly showed a video in which a new Google program, Google Duplex, made a phone call and scheduled a hair salon appointment. The program performed those tasks well enough that a human at the other end of the call didn't suspect she was talking to a computer. Assuming the demonstration is legitimate, that's an impressive (if somewhat creepy) accomplishment.