With the recent hype and hoopla over "robot personhood" CNET has a couple of mostly rational looks at AI.
First, the fictional depictions:
http://www.cnet.com/news/hollywood-a...t-far-fetched/
(And yes, Clarke's explanation in the books of how Hal "went bad" is pretty Asimovian. For a non-Azimov construct. Hal was just following orders. Conflicting orders.)
http://www.cnet.com/news/ai-frankens...e-experts-say/
Quote:
For now, AI is good at sorting things, making predictions and powering through algorithms, but it struggles to think critically or solve problems you'd find in standardized tests. The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence recently devised a contest in which the computer program that scored the best on an eighth-grade science test would win $50,000 for its creator. They all failed. The best score was a 54 percent.
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In other words "AI" is good at data processing and lousy at actually thinking.
It'll stay in fiction for a while longer.