A mere four years ago AI was not even able to pass a Grade eight science test. Seven hundred computer scientists competed in a contest with a significant amount of money as prize. They had to build artificial intelligence that could pass a Grade eight science test. The computer scientists did their best, but not even the most advanced AI system could score better than 60percent in the test. It seems that the AI was just not advanced enough to fully reach the language and logic skills expected of students in the eighth grade.

Last week, researchers at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence demonstrated in a new paper that an AI they'd designed could ace an eighth-grade multiple-choice science test with more than 90 percent correct answers -- and do quite well on a 12th-grade science test, too, with more than 80 percent correct answers. The system, called Aristo, took the New York Regents Science Exam (a standardized test for students across New York State), with a few limitations: it didn't have to solve the problems that involved looking at diagrams. Nonetheless, the researchers tested the program on different versions of the test as well as on tests from different years and found that its performance was pretty consistent: It's an A student. Aristo demonstrates how quickly AI is advancing. As recently as 2016, the paper's authors note, no one in the field could manage to score as well as 60 percent on a similar eighth-grade science exam.

Is actual knowledge needed to beat this test? The stories were supposed to capture a new step forward in artificial intelligence. A "Breakthrough for A.I. Technology: Passing an 8th-Grade Science Test," said the New York Times. "AI Aristo takes science test, emerges multiple-choice superstar," said TechXPlore. Both stories were talking about Aristo (indicating a child version of Aristotle), a project of Paul Allen's Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, where the headline read, "How to tutor AI from an'F' to an'A.'"

This article is part of Demystifying AI, a series of posts that (try to) disambiguate the jargon and myths surrounding AI. Last week, the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) introduced Aristo, an artificial intelligence model that scored above 90 percent on an 8th grade science test and 80 percent on a 12th-grade exam. Passing a science test might sound mundane, if you're not familiar with how deep learning algorithms, the current bleeding edge of AI, work. After all, AI is already performing tasks such as diagnosing cancer, detecting fraud and playing complicated games, which are much more complicated than answering simple science questions about the moon and squirrel populations. But despite its fascinating achievements, deep learning struggles when it comes to tackling problems that require reasoning and commonsense.

Aristo has passed an American eighth grade science test. If you are told Aristo is an earnest kid who loves to read all he can about Faraday and plays the drums you will say so what, big deal. Aristo, though, is an artificial intelligence program and scientists would like the world to know this is a big deal, as "a benchmark in AI development," as Melissa Locker called it in Fast Company. We mean, just think about it. Cade Metz, in The New York Times, has thought about it.

Could you score an'A' on an eighth-grade science test? If so, you're in the same league as Aristo, an artificial intelligence system whose remarkable language and logic skills highlight recent progress in the A.I. industry. For context: Four years ago, some 700 computer scientists competed for $80,000 to develop an A.I. that could merely pass an eighth-grade science test. None scored higher than 60 percent. But now, thanks to improved "language models" driven by neural networks, systems like Aristo are becoming much better at predicting language and understanding how to apply it to solve logic-based tasks. Aristo, as The New York Times notes, is built on a neural-network technology called Bert, developed by Google.

Four years ago, more than 700 computer scientists competed in a contest to build artificial intelligence that could pass an eighth-grade science test. There was $80,000 in prize money on the line. Even the most sophisticated system couldn't do better than 60% on the test. AI couldn't match the language and logic skills that students are expected to have when they enter high school. But Wednesday, the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, a prominent lab in Seattle, unveiled a new system that passed the test with room to spare.

The artificial intelligence system, called Aristo, just passed an eighth-grade science test, a benchmark in AI development that scientists had been aiming to reach for four years, The New York Times reports. It got an A on the quiz, correctly answering more than 90% of the questions on the test designed for New York students, and then it went on to answer questions on an exam for 12th graders, earning a solid B (80%). The AI's science prowess shows how far artificial intelligence has come at mimicking human logic, language, and decision-making. Unlike your average eighth grader, the AI, which was designed by the Allen Institute--the lab founded by the late Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen--was built solely to take multiple-choice tests. According to the Times, the researchers view standardized science tests as a more meaningful AI benchmark than the machine's ability to play chess, and Aristo passed with flying colors.

Artificial intelligence may seem like a futuristic concept, but we're already experiencing it in real ways in our lives, whether we know it or not -- in areas including speech recognition, spam filters and even loan processing. And AI is only going to get more sophisticated from here. That was one of the messages from Oren Etzioni, CEO of the Seattle-based Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2), founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Etzioni spoke with us for this week's episode of the GeekWire radio show and podcast. Our conversation comes amid a boom in everyday AI, from self-driving cars to a computer that has mastered the game of Go. Microsoft put its stake in the ground with an AI-driven vision that CEO Satya Nadella calls "Conversation as a Platform," with virtual agents working on our behalf. Etzioni takes a much more optimistic view of AI than some of his peers. "The existential risk is just way overblown," he says. "It's much more likely that an asteroid will strike the Earth and annihilate life as we know it than AI will turn evil. Listen to the show below, download the MP3 here, and continue reading for an edited transcript of this week's show. Todd Bishop: Oren, in your current position, you really have a sense for the state of artificial intelligence. I think a lot of people out there see it in their daily lives in a very primitive form. They're watching Google's DeepMind beat a world champion Go player. The potential of artificial intelligence is there in a rudimentary form. Where are we now today in terms of the state of artificial intelligence, and where do you think we'll go over the next three to five years? Oren Etzioni: I do actually think that people are using it more than they realize. In addition to something like Siri, Google Search algorithm uses AI and machine learning all the time. Speech dictation on our phones whether it's Android or iPhone has gotten tremendously better and that's using deep learning behind the scenes to improve what's called a speech recognition. Loan processing these days is often done in a highly automated fashion using machine learning. As a matter of fact, AI is becoming more invisible and integrated into our lives. Of course, that can be a little bit scary to people. They say, "Wait a minute.

In 2012, IBM Watson went to medical school. So said The New York Times, announcing that the tech giant's artificially intelligent question-and-answer machine had begun a "stint as a medical student" at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. This was just a metaphor. Clinicians were helping IBM train Watson for use in medical research. But as metaphors go, it wasn't a very good one.