Robot sitting on a bunch of books. Photo: Kirillm (Getty).
It’s 2018 and we’re surrounded by self-driving cars, have devices that listen to everything we say in our homes, and are convinced we need to get the newest smart phones even though we can’t afford them. What a time to be alive.
Based on our addiction to technology and our relentless efforts to advance it in every way possible, it should surprise no one that artificial intelligence is now outperforming humans in the reading department.
Artificial Intelligence Is Reading Better Than Humans
If you’ve seen The Terminator, you’re familiar with robots getting smart enough to one day decimate mankind and enslave the survivors. It all starts with developing artificial intelligence smart enough to think for itself before deciding it’s smarter than us. Well, it looks like some people at Stanford University are making sure this happens in real life.
Experts at the esteemed college used programs to measure a computer’s reading abilities by having it take a comprehensive reading exam. The programs, built by Chinese company Alibaba and American company Microsoft, by all accounts kicked human ass.
“The is the first time that a machine has outperformed humans on such a test,” read a statement from Alibaba.
Microsoft’s program scored an 82.650 on a comprehension test, and a day earlier, Alibaba’s model scored 82.44. And us pitiful humans? A group who took the test came in third place with a score of 82.304. Womp, womp, womp.
You probably think this is no big deal, right? So what if a robot can comprehend a boring book better than you can. What you might not have considered is how this might affect jobs. Maybe even your job.
From CNN Tech:
Luo Si, the chief scientist of natural language processing at the Chinese company’s AI research group, called the milestone “a great honor,” but also acknowledged that it will likely lead to a significant number of workers losing their jobs to machines.
The technology “can be gradually applied to numerous applications such as customer service, museum tutorials and online responses to medical inquiries from patients, decreasing the need for human input in an unprecedented way,” Si said in a statement.
So if you work in customer service or interact with people who have questions about sensitive issues, this kind of AI may just replace you. But don’t worry because, like The Terminator, humans will inevitably form a resistance complete with laser canons and exploding cyborgs. Should be fun. Can’t wait.
