Is There a Difference Between Human and Artificial Intelligence?

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In your book, computers can't teach themselves anything except what they've been programmed to learn. That would be one measure of intelligence or at least I think it's a measure of intelligence. There's a huge focus in AI on this thing called transfer learning and that is exactly what we're talking about. And that's something that we humans are able to do.

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.