Gigaom AI Minute – August 10

Transcript

It was Arthur C. Clarke who said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. As our society relies more and more on technology we're reaching a position where, ironically, we understand less and less that's going on. We're resigning ourselves to live in a black box world, surrounded by technology we simply don't understand.

Gone are the days when you could fiddle around with an object, say a carburetor, and figure out more or less what each part does. My smartphone is inscrutable, and a look at its insides tell me very little about how it operates.

Artificial intelligence is like this but even more so. The suggestions or conclusions that artificial intelligence creates sometimes are not even decipherable by its creators. This is a whole new world, and artificial intelligence looks like a whole new kind of magic.