Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Measuring the intelligence of AI is one of the trickiest but most important questions in the field of computer science. If you can’t understand whether the machine you’ve built is cleverer today than it was yesterday, how do you know you’re making progress?
At first glance, this might seem like a non-issue. “Obviously AI is getting smarter” is one reply. “Just look at all the money and talent pouring into the field. Look at the milestones, like beating humans at Go, and the applications that were impossible to solve a decade ago that are commonplace today, like image recognition. How is that not progress?”
Another reply is that these achievements aren’t really a good gauge of intelligence….