The document discusses the recent resurgence of interest and funding in artificial intelligence due to advances in algorithms, computing power, and availability of large datasets. It notes several AI startups that are working on automating routine tasks through narrow AI applications. However, it also discusses concerns about the potential risks of developing superintelligent machines.

1. The Astounding Resurrection of AI
A Primer On Artificial Intelligence
March 27, 2015
Matt Turck, FirstMark
Capital

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About FirstMark
2
FirstMark
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Established in 2008
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Matt Turck
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Last updated 3/30/15
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AI in Hollywood

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AI in the 60’s: “It’s going to be huge”
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“Machines will be capable, within twenty years, of doing any work a man can
do.”
- H. A. Simon, The Shape of Automation for Men and Management,
1965
“In three to eight years we will have a machine with the general intelligence of
an average human being.”
- Marvin Minsky, Life Magazine, 1970

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Broken Promises
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The AI Spring
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Money is Pouring In
After Google’s acquisition of
DeepMind ($400M-$650M),
AI startups see a 302%
funding jump in 2014.

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Rapidly Accelerating Startup Activity
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The New Rockstars
Yann Lecun Geoff Hinton Andrew Ng

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What’s Different This Time?
“AI [has] now embraced a statistical, brute force approach based on analyzing
vast amounts of information with powerful computers and sophisticated
algorithms.”
- Irving Wladawksy-Berer, Wall Street Journal, Nov 21, 2014
10
Cheap Parallel
Computing
Massive amounts
of data
Better Algorithms
, Deep Learning
A
I

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Horizontal AI?
11
A
I

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Or Vertical AI?
“Most of the commercial work completed by AI will be done by special-purpose,
narrowly focused software brains that can, for example, translate any language
into any other language, but do little else. Drive a car, but not converse. Or
recall every pixel of every video on YouTube but not anticipate your work
routines. In the next 10 years, 99 percent of the artificial intelligence that
you will interact with, directly or indirectly, will be nerdily autistic,
supersmart specialists.”
– Kevin Kelly, Wired, Oct 27, 2014
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Automating Mind Numbing Tasks
“People in occupations that span the skill spectrum devote large amounts
of time to ridiculous little tasks that are trivially easy for people but
nonetheless time consuming. Think paralegals or lawyers sifting through boxes
full of documents or researchers fixing all the little irregularities in a dataset.
Maybe the end of that sort of thing, and the beginning of a new round of faster
productivity growth, is in sight.”
“Signs of things to come”, The Economist, July 23rd, 2014
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x.ai

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How x.ai Works
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x.ai Making Friends
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The Perils of AI
“If we build these devices to
take care of everything for us,
eventually they'll think faster
than us and they'll get rid of
the slow humans to run
companies more efficiently.”
– Steve Wozniak
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“With artificial intelligence we
are summoning the demon. In
all those stories where there’s
the guy with the pentagram and
the holy water, it’s like yeah
he’s sure he can control the
demon. Didn't work out.”
– Elon Musk
“First the machines will do a lot
of jobs for us and not be super
intelligent. That should be
positive if we manage it well. A
few decades after that though
the intelligence is strong
enough to be a concern.”
– Bill Gates

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Living with AI
“At x.ai, we see users responding to Amy as if she is indeed
human. Phrases like ‘You’re amazing’, ‘thank you so much’,
‘would you be so kind’ and other notions of kindness arrive as
replies.”
“Intellectually, we know that a robot doesn’t need to be shown
such level of gratitude but we do. Humans treating an AI like
another human is exactly what we aim to achieve. We love
it!”
– x.ai
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