Good reading on Artificial Intelligence

Published by in edtech on February 28th, 2011
If you read technology blogs or listened to technology podcasts last week, it was hard to miss the victory of the IBM-created computer "Watson" over human opponents in the gameshow, Jeopardy. This situation makes me naturally think of Ray Kurtzweil's predictions about nano-technologies, embedded chips and "Technological singularity," sometimes defined as the point in human history when computers become smarter than humans.

The NPR segment last week, "The Dark Side of Watson" included interviews with an expert on Artificial Intelligence (AI) who has some compelling thoughts to share on these subjects.

Martin Ford is the author of "The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future" and wrote a three part series recently in The Atlantic which sheds more light on AI and the promises (as well as challenges) it poses today and will likely pose tomorrow.

The recent three-part article series is:

I've added this to my "read soon" list, which I now manage (among other ways) with the "TooManyTabs for Chrome" extension. (It's free)

As Steven Johnson argues in his book, "Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation," digital technologies and the web are not disruptive because they simply enable people to do the same things, faster and faster. They are disruptive mainly when they enable us to do TRANSFORMATIVE things we couldn't do previously.

Posted via email from wesley fryer’s posterous

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