In this episode Byron and Bill talk about SRI International, aging, human productivity and more.
Byron Reese: This is Voices in AI, brought to you by GigaOm. I’m Byron Reese. Today our guest is Bill Mark. He heads up SRI International’s Information and Computing Sciences Division which consists of two hundred and fifty researchers, in four laboratories, who create new technology and virtual personal assistants, information security, machine learning, speech, natural language, computer vision—all the things we talk about on the show. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from MIT. Welcome to the show, Bill.
Bill Mark: Good to be here.
So, let’s start off with a little semantics. Why is artificial intelligence, artificial? Is artificial because it’s not really intelligence, or what?
No, it’s artificial, because it’s created by human beings as opposed to nature. So, in that sense, it’s an artifact, just like any other kind of physical artifact. In this case, it’s usually a software artifact.
But, at its core, it truly is intelligent and its intelligence doesn’t differ in substance, only in degree, from human intelligence?