I agree that Watson is nothing like a true artificial intelligence. But I do not believe that this means we are unable to create such a thing. I think true AI

I agree that Watson is nothing like a true artificial intelligence. But I do not believe that this means we are unable to create such a thing. I think true AI will be a highly-parallel learning machine, possibly modeled off of something like the human brain. But I do not think that we need to fully understand the human brain to create an AI smarter than us. I think one of the big challenges may be in providing the proper sensors / inputs to this learning device. I think once we have a true AI, we won't really understand how it works, just as we can train a neural network but can't look at the network itself and make much sense from its parts. I think it's possible that the road to the singularity may be gradual, and we might not even realize when it happens. Edit: Today's xkcd is somewhat relevant: http://xkcd.com/1450/ http://xkcd.com/1450/