[codyh1]

Human level AI seems to be a far reach but AI in specific domains seems to be the approaching intersection. What I mean by this is the self-driving car...very discrete skills but not any where near human level. Let's not forget google's "Find Mitten's the Cat" AI on videos.

[simonh]

Computers have always been very good at performing very specific tasks in highly proscribed circumstances. What were learning to do is expand the circumstances within which the computer can operate, but as you say the tasks are still very highly specific.

We could probably have programmed a computer to drive a car back in the 70s, within an extremely specific configuration of roads and with no traffic or pedestrians. Now self driving cars have very advanced sensors, can cope with other traffic, pedestrians and a much wider range of road geometries. But it's still only useful for driving a car, you couldn't take the same program and teach it to even controll a boat or a plane let alone play Jeopardy, predict the weather or trade on the stock market. Systems like this are going to be very useful, but they are not taking us on a path to develop strong general AI.

[ghaff]

>But it's still only useful for driving a car

And it's still only useful for driving a car in a rather specific configuration of roads and a somewhat limited set of conditions. I'd argue that a car's ability to operate autonomously and rather reliably under those circumstances is leading a lot of folks to be very optimistic about how long it will be before I can summon robo-taxi with my smartphone.