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I used to work for a company that was developing AI API's. I was just a sys admin but it was there that I got the bug to go back to school as I was the only one there without a Phd and they were doing some really cool stuff. For fun they let me take the test that they gave to AI Scientist applicants and was surprised that I got 78% with no background which they said was better than most of their applicants. LOL. But I digress. Anyhow that was back in the 90's.
One of their demos was a racetrack that allowed you to change the track on the fly and the car would adjust its course using pattern recognition. They also developed software for OCR and Voice recognition. In fact Dragon Naturally speaking, at one time, used their AI engine. These types of things are based on patterns. Indeed many of the smart computers or even self driving cars are built around patterns and things that can be quantified/analyzed.
To build on what Z-man already stated. A human can look at a folding chair and know that they can open it and sit on it. It might take some investigative work but a human that had never seen a chair would figure it out. As an example, I have a video of my girls playing with a soccer ball and a volleyball when they were very little - I don't know the exact age but neither of them were talking yet. In the video after kicking the balls around they placed their balls on the ground, sat on the balls, faced each other and proceeded to talk gibberish to each other. They knew the balls were there to play with but there is a human quality that told them that they can also use it as something to sit on. That quality is reasoning. What computers lack is the ability to reason and computer reasoning is just one field of AI research that is extemely complicated involving fuzzy logic and such. Also, curiosity is what drives humans to learn things. Computers work in numbers so how do you create and algorithm for curiosity?
A cool read on the subject is Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. It's not an easy read but it is interesting regarding patterns and making meaning out the meaningless and how he sees AI playing out.
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