If the internet was the birth of the digital revolution, then today’s artificial intelligence is its first baby steps toward maturity.
Today, A.I. researchers feed an algorithm data and painstakingly help it learn. But to make A.I. that’s knowledgeable on a grand scale, like learning the idiosyncrasies needed to translate every human language, the software needs to learn on its own. However, researchers don’t agree on how to make that happen. One camp thinks that if we correct algorithms when they make the wrong decisions, they’ll learn to avoid bad choices and choose only the right ones. In other words, we parent our A.I. until it reaches the ability to thrive on its own.