Recent AI developments

The Watson breakthrough

Overview

Watson and natural languages

Watson and medical diagnosis

Unpacking the shift (Ford, 2015, chapter 4)

Leading questions:

• What is “deep learning” and why is it important?
• Why do Ford think that “layers of middle management will evaporate”?
• Are big data and predictive algorithms “intelligent”?

Inventing Alphago

Are these AIs actually intelligent? (Reber, 1997)

Leading questions:

• What is the difference between “weak” and “strong” AI?
• Are the caterpillars that Reber talks about “intelligent”?
• Why should we focus more on experience and consciousness rather than intelligence?

Going deeper on Alphago (Silver et al, 2017)