Prediction Machines, Updated and Expanded

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Introduction

Machine Intelligence

If the following scenario doesn’t already sound familiar, then it will soon. A kid is doing homework alone in another room. You hear a question, “What’s the capital of Delaware?” The parent starts thinking: Baltimore … too obvious … Wilmington … not a capital. But before the thought is complete, a machine called Alexa says the correct answer: “The capital of Delaware is Dover.” Alexa is Amazon’s artificial intelligence, or AI, that interprets natural language and provides answers to questions at lightning speed. Alexa has replaced the parent as the all-knowing source of information in the eyes of a child.

AI is everywhere. It’s in our phones, cars, shopping experiences, romantic matchmaking, hospitals, banks, ...