What's the Difference Between Humans and Machines?

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In the course of writing this book, I've learned how much of our intelligence is invisible to us. The problem is that we can't write it down because so much of it is unconscious. There's been some approaches to common sense reasoning in machines by building in all the common sense. But one of the biggest grand challenges and huge amounts of money being put into it is create like an 18-month-old baby.

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.