Artificial Intelligence is on the Rise, and That Might Be a Good Thing [Video]

We all know the standard tropes and fears surrounding artificial intelligence — how the robots will replace all of us at our jobs and evolve to overthrow humanity in an apocalyptic blaze, that kind of thing. PBS Off Book wanted to poke those tropes with a stick and see just what AI could actually bring us, so they gathered up several computer science professors from NYU and Oxford to ask them just what we should expect from our future cybernetic overlords.

Don’t worry, they all say variations on this: We’re still a very long way off from authentic AI, despite how good Watson is at Jeopardy. Even better, most of them seem to think it’s going to do a lot of good for humanity in the long run. Well, that’s comforting.

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