Artificial intelligence (AI) can do a lot of things: like analyze data 100 times faster than humans, scan radiology images to diagnose deadly diseases that the human eye cannot see, and demonstrate perfect object recall, just to name a few. However, there might be something they cannot learn. Tech Republic brought this topic to us in their article, “Artificial intelligence can’t yet learn common sense.”

A recent attempt to instill common sense knowledge from the everyday world into the automated reasoning that takes place with AI was less than successful. Common human observations are lost on the AI program. It reverted to analyzing statistical patterns. We have to figure out how to make software that learns without explicit instruction. However, if humankind’s dreams of AI are to be realized, we should figure this out.

Common sense is a critical component to building AIs that can understand what they read, control robots that can operate usefully and safely in the human environment and interact with human users in reasonable ways.

Melody K. Smith

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