
Awesome technology, an artificial human brain, cute robot pets, chatterbots, and two tragic suicides.

Artificial intelligence (“AI”) is, simply put, “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines.” Quintessential examples of artificially intelligent machines include Hal from 2001 Space Odyssey or the robots from Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot series of short stories. Many of the things we think of when we think of true artificial intelligence — such as…

While traditional AI frameworks resulted in machines which are little more than tools or puppets, dynamic and self-regulating systems are arising which can autonomously act or produce content. It may be awhile before we see a digital entity that we recognize as being self-aware, yet computers that think for themselves are already among us.
Turing’s approach to a triggered a series of “chatterbots,” programs which were designed to interact with humans in a realistic way. Natural language processing was difficult for AI researchers to solve due to the huge difference in the way humans and machines process language. We learn through interaction with other people and the environment and…