What's Going on in China?

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Google is an applied AI company. It's unusual how much research is going on right now inside profit-driven companies, which I think is glorious mostly. There's just a few companies that have so much power because they have so much data. They have so much kind of control over what we see, what we think, what we do. That's really troubling. But on the other hand, as you say, in the past it was unusual for big companies to participate in basic research and that we're seeing a lot of that at these companies.

Computer Scientist and author Melanie Mitchell of Portland State University and the Santa Fe Institute talks about her book Artificial Intelligence with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Mitchell explains where we are today in the world of artificial intelligence (AI) and where we might be going. Despite the hype and excitement surrounding AI, Mitchell argues that much of what is called "learning" and "intelligence" when done by machines is not analogous to human capabilities. The capabilities of machines are highly limited to explicit, narrow tasks with little transfer to similar but different challenges. Along the way, Mitchell explains some of the techniques used in AI and how progress has been made in many areas.