Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust
OVERVIEW
Despite the hype surrounding AI, creating an intelligence that rivals or exceeds human levels is far more complicated than we have been led to believe. Professors Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis have spent their careers at the forefront of AI research and have witnessed some of the greatest milestones in the field, but they argue that a computer beating a human in Jeopardy! does not signal that we are on the doorstep of fully autonomous cars or superintelligent machines. The achievements in the field thus far have occurred in closed systems with fixed sets of rules, and these approaches are too narrow to achieve genuine intelligence.
The real world, in contrast, is wildly complex and open-ended. How can we bridge this gap? What will the consequences be when we do? Taking inspiration from the human mind, Marcus and Davis explain what we need to advance AI to the next level, and suggest that if we are wise along the way, we won't need to worry about a future of machine overlords. If we focus on endowing machines with common sense and deep understanding, rather than simply focusing on statistical analysis and gathering ever larger collections of data, we will be able to create an AI we can trust—in our homes, our cars, and our doctors' offices. Rebooting AI provides a lucid, clear-eyed assessment of the current science and offers an inspiring vision of how a new generation of AI can make our lives better.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Dr. Gary Marcus is a scientist and Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University. He is the founder of machine learning startup companies Robust AI and Geometric Intelligence, which was acquired by Uber in 2016. He is the author of Kluge, The Birth of the Mind, and the New York Times best seller Guitar Zero.
Ernest Davis is a Professor of Computer Science at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Science at New York University. He has authored four books, including Representations of Commonsense Knowledge and Verses for the Information Age.