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Ask HN: What's the next AI milestone?

12 points by tangled_zans ↗ HN
For me, ever since Deep Blue has beaten Kasparov, Go has always been that "intractably large problem" that I would refer to when talking about things-AI-can't-do.

Now that our AI algorithms are capable of dealing with trees that have more nodes than atoms in the universe, what's the next concrete AI milestone that I can start bringing up at dinner parties?

10 comments

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Nicholas_C
Perhaps fully self-driving cars.
ljk
Stupid question: How does self-driving cars "learn"? Does it have to crash to learn not to do whatever it did to not crash?
Nicholas_C
The definition of AI from Wikipedia:

""" Artificial intelligence (AI) is the intelligence exhibited by machines or software. It is also the name of the academic field of study which studies how to create computers and computer software that are capable of intelligent behavior. Major AI researchers and textbooks define this field as "the study and design of intelligent agents",[1] in which an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chances of success.[2] John McCarthy, who coined the term in 1955,[3] defines it as "the science and engineering of making intelligent machines". """

I believe that creating and sustaining a self driving car fits those criteria.

mrfusion
That's actually a really good question. I'd imagine an ai would have a lot of trouble in situations where it's never learned how to drive. Mattress falling off a car, oil patch on road, etc.
rurban
Perhaps fully self-drive cars without prepared maps being loaded on demand. Which would exclude Google and enable driving around beyond their event horizon. E.g in private areas, or Europe, Asia and such. On in areas with road construction going on
dmitrifedorov
AI that could blame the other AI for its own errors
kmnc
Starcraft is a cool next step yet it kind of seems unfair in a way since the AI has distinct advantages in certain areas (namely, precision). A pro can play at close to 300APM but are those actions always 100% precise when moving the camera/etc? It seems like unless you level the playing field in this regard it may be hard to take a lot of value from the AI winning since it may develop strategies that rely heavily on its advantages in those areas. Maybe that is completely fine though, or doesn't actually matter if strategic decisions trump precision.

No Limit Poker is a pretty interesting problem, especially when it comes to reinforcement learning...can an AI learn to adapt to different play styles?

Both of these games raise an interesting question as it relates to how exploitable a reinforcement learning AI will be in games where high risk decisions have major impacts and there isn't perfect information. Will the AI learn to have a more overall conservative approach to guard against these plays or will it itself exploit them.

kleer001
I still think the classic Turing test needs to be beaten. And not by 33% of the testers thinking the applicant is a barely literate and scatterbrained Russian teenager. No, it should be able to carry on a conversation indistinguishable from an educated, well spoken, English as first language speaking adult with curiosity and personality. Thereby fooling 100% of the testers.

Or barring that an AI that can perform valuable services that allow it to pay for its own server costs. Thereby making it grown up and gotten a job.