Melanie Mitchell on Artificial Intelligence

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🗓️ 6 January 2020

⏱️ 79 minutes

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Summary

Computer Scientist and author Melanie Mitchell of Portland State University and the Santa Fe Institute talks about her book Artificial Intelligence with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Mitchell explains where we are today in the world of artificial intelligence (AI) and where we might be going. Despite the hype and excitement surrounding AI, Mitchell argues that much of what is called "learning" and "intelligence" when done by machines is not analogous to human capabilities. The capabilities of machines are highly limited to explicit, narrow tasks with little transfer to similar but different challenges. Along the way, Mitchell explains some of the techniques used in AI and how progress has been made in many areas.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:08.0	I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
0:12.0	Our website is econtalk.org, where you can subscribe, comment on this podcast,
0:17.0	and find links and other information related to today's conversation.
0:21.0	We'll also find our archives where you can listen to every episode we've ever done going back to 2006.
0:27.0	Our email address is mailadycontalk.org. We'd love to hear from you.
0:33.0	Today is November 19, 2019, and my guest is computer scientist and author Melanie Mitchell.
0:38.0	She is professor of computer science at Portland State University and external professor
0:43.0	and co-chair of the Science Board at the Santa Fe Institute.
0:46.0	Her latest book and the subject of today's episode is Artificial Intelligence,
0:51.0	a guide for thinking humans. Malay, welcome to Econ Talk.
0:55.0	Thanks for having me.
0:56.0	So this is a really superb overview of the history of Artificial Intelligence,
1:01.0	which doesn't take up too much of the book, but it is in there, which is very nice.
1:04.0	More importantly, it's an overview of the current level of the capabilities of AI.
1:09.0	It teaches the reader how Artificial Intelligence is actually used in many of its applications today.
1:17.0	And along the way, we learn about your assessment of where you think AI is going
1:22.0	and how that might affect our lives. So it's a wonderful book.
1:27.0	I want to start off with a lecture that you referred to from Douglas Hofstetter when he was at Google.
1:33.0	And he, at that point, when was that lecture roughly?
1:38.0	I think he was around 2013 or so.
1:41.0	So he was worried about the progress that AI had made in chess and in music,
	...

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