Christopher Mims \u2014 Wall Street Journal<\/p>\n
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The age of intelligent machines has arrived\u2014only they don\u2019t look at all like we expected. Forget what you\u2019ve seen in movies; this is no HAL from \u201c2001: A Space Odyssey,\u201d and it\u2019s certainly not Scarlett Johansson\u2019s disembodied voice in \u201cHer.\u201d It\u2019s more akin to what happens when insects, or even fungi, do when they \u201cthink.\u201d (What, you didn\u2019t know that slime molds can solve mazes?)<\/p>\n
Artificial intelligence has lately been transformed from an academic curiosity to something that has measurable impact on our lives. Google Inc. used it to increase the accuracy of voice recognition in Android by 25%. The Associated Press is printing business stories written by it. Facebook Inc. is toying with it as a way to improve the relevance of the posts it shows you.<\/p>\n
What is especially interesting about this point in the history of AI is that it\u2019s no longer just for technology companies. Startups are beginning to adapt it to problems where, at least to me, its applicability is genuinely surprising.<\/p>\n
Take advertising copywriting. Could the \u201cMad Men\u201d of Don Draper\u2019s day have predicted that by the beginning of the next century, they would be replaced by machines? Yet a company called Persado aims to do just that.<\/p>\n