Revisiting the rise of A.I.: How far has artificial intelligence come since 2010? | Emerging Tech - Digital Trends

Luke Dormehl, UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends reports, 2010 doesn’t seem all that long ago. 

Photo: JumpStory

Facebook was already a giant, time-consuming leviathan; smartphones and the iPad were a daily part of people’s lives; The Walking Dead was a big hit on televisions across America; and the most talked-about popular musical artists were the likes of Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber. So pretty much like life as we enter 2020, then? Perhaps in some ways.

One place that things most definitely have moved on in leaps and bounds, however, is on the artificial intelligence front. Over the past decade, A.I. has made some huge advances, both technically and in the public consciousness, that mark this out as one of the most important ten year stretches in the field’s history. What have been the biggest advances? Funny you should ask; I’ve just written a list on exactly that topic...

Of all the tech giant, Amazon has arguably done the most to advance the A.I. assistant in the years since. Its Alexa-powered Echo speakers have not only shown the potential of these A.I. assistants; they’ve demonstrated that they’re compelling enough to exist as standalone pieces of hardware. Today, voice-based assistants are so commonplace they barely even register. Ten years ago most people had never used one...

Cars that drive themselves 
In the first years of the twenty-first century, the idea of an autonomous car seemed like it would never move beyond science fiction. In MIT and Harvard economists Frank Levy and Richard Murnane’s 2004 book The New Division of Labor, driving a vehicle was described as a task too complex for machines to carry out. “Executing a left turn against oncoming traffic involves so many factors that it is hard to imagine discovering the set of rules that can replicate a driver’s behavior,” they wrote.
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Source: Digital Trends