Our Machines Now Have Knowledge We'll Never Understand

So wrote Wired's Chris Anderson in 2008. It kicked up a little storm at the time, as Anderson, the magazine's editor, undoubtedly intended. For example, an article in a journal of molecular biology asked, "…if we stop looking for models and hypotheses, are we still really doing science?" The answer clearly was supposed to be: "No." But today -- not even a decade since Anderson's article -- the controversy sounds quaint.