Âé¶¹´«Ã½

Rodney Brooks forecasts the future

By Rodney Brooks

15 November 2006

Show a two-year-old child a key, a shoe, a cup, a book or any of hundreds of other objects, and they can reliably name its class – even when they have never before seen something that looks exactly like that particular key, shoe, cup or book. Our computers and robots still cannot do this task with any reliability. We have been working on this problem for a while. Forty years ago the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology appointed an undergraduate to solve it over the summer. He failed, and I failed on the same problem in…

Sign up to our weekly newsletter

Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox. We'll also keep you up to date with Âé¶¹´«Ã½ events and special offers.

Sign up

To continue reading, today with our introductory offers

or

Existing subscribers

Sign in to your account
Piano Exit Overlay Banner Mobile Piano Exit Overlay Banner Desktop