Despite the hype surrounding AI, creating an intelligence that rivals or exceeds human levels is far more complicated than we have been led to believe. Professor Gary Marcus has spent his career at the forefront of AI research and has witnessed some of the greatest milestones in the field. He joined us with insight from his co-written book Rebooting AI to argue that a computer beating a human in Jeopardy! does not signal that we are on the doorstep of fully autonomous cars or superintelligent machines. Marcus insisted that achievements in the field thus far have occurred in closed systems with fixed sets of rules, and these approaches are too narrow to achieve genuine intelligence. Taking inspiration from the human mind, Marcus explained what we need to advance AI to the next level. He suggested that if we focus on endowing machines with common sense and deep understanding—rather than prioritizing statistical analysis and rampant data collection—we will be able to create an AI we can trust. Join Marcus for a lucid assessment of the current science and vision of AI, and an exploration of how it can make our lives better.

Gary Marcus is a scientist, best-selling author, and entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of Robust.AI and was founder and CEO of Geometric Intelligence, a machine-learning company acquired by Uber in 2016. He is the author of five books, including Kluge, The Birth of the Minday, and the New York Times best seller Guitar Zero.

Presented by Town Hall Seattle. Recorded live in The Forum on October 2, 2019.