A Weird Month for Artificial Intelligence Some of the more interesting and universally accessible developments in technology over the past decade (to me anyway) have been within the artificial intelligence world. Unlike many other industry advancements, stories of high-profile AI successes or failures make suitable discussion fodder at family dinner tables. The "Fork Me On GitHub" types appreciate the complexity of the required engineering efforts, while the "Hey Person Who Computers -- Can You Set My VCR Clock?" crowd can just think "whoa" without concern for what is happening under the hood. One somewhat recent and well-publicized AI event was the Jeopardy-playing Watson supercomputer built by IBM.

Some of the more interesting and universally accessible developments in technology over the past decade (to me anyway) have been within the artificial intelligence world. Unlike many other industry advancements, stories of high-profile AI successes or failures make suitable discussion fodder at family dinner tables. The "Fork Me On GitHub" types appreciate the complexity of the required engineering efforts, while the "Hey Person Who Computers -- Can You Set My VCR Clock?" crowd can just think "whoa" without concern for what is happening under the hood. One somewhat recent and well-publicized AI event was the Jeopardy-playing Watson supercomputer built by IBM. Those in the technology community understood the difficulties of natural language processing (all while being required to answer in the form of a question) while much of the world just wanted to see a computer built by anonymous geeks humiliate more smug geeks on live TV.