During the “automation scare” in the 1950s, people were
intrigued yet suspicious about the power of computers. Would
they someday send us into permanent unemployment? Could robots
eventually take over the world? The original goal of artificial
intelligence was to build a person out of silicone. Although
scientists made quick progress in building computers and robots
that amazed us, they never came close to actually replicating
the human brain. “Machine learning” was first introduced 50
years ago. This concept focuses on computers’ ability to “learn”
not through human programming, but through experience and
pattern identification. For example, machine learning allows a
computer to become a masterful chess player by observing good
and bad moves and learning from mistakes. While a computer looks
at every possible move up to 20 to 40 moves ahead, humans use
more conceptual skills to decide how to make moves. In a recent
PBS NOVA documentary “The Smartest Machine on Earth,”
researchers explore powerful new tools i