This is an article for people who don't know anything about AI (or, for that matter, CS in general). I was skeptical when it opened with the perfunctory Terminator reference, and it didn't fail to disappoint.

The MSM's conflation of actually existent AI (search, learning, etc.) with AGI is becoming a real pet peeve of mine.

I read technical/science articles in the NYTimes mostly out of curiosity about what the larger public thinks about these things and how all the complex research and work in technical and scientific fields gets distilled down and summarized for the mass public. I find it interesting to know what people outside of our bubble think. But, yeah, if you are reading this article seeking new information about AI, then this is a waste of time.

I should have been clearer. It's not an article for AI-ignorami simply because it doesn't have depth; it is actively misleading.

The article fits a general audience well. Does NYtimes ever have technical articles up to HN's par?

A growing interest in AI is a positive thing.

Kurizwells book on a global brain sounds interesting - the inspiration must of came from the Asimov's "The Last Question".

The book on the global brain is by Kelly, not Kurzweil.

I'm not so convinced that the existing stuff is actually I (intelligence). So their conflation is not so wrong.

But I agree that this article was a waste of time. Especially since CPU's are not getting faster, and have not for several years.

This article gives me the same feeling of when I watch movies with a horrible scientific plot (eg The Transformers). It's entertaining, but so off the mark.

I guess writing about the Multilayer Perceptron, Support/Relevance Vector Machines, and Markov Models isn't as sexy and probably wouldn't sell well...

Then again, I guess what they ARE writing doesn't sell well either...

Artificial Intelligence, like controlled nuclear fusion, is always in the future. About 40 years in the future.

The difference is that no one claims they've produced strong AI, because, unlike cold fusion, it's too easy to test. :D

I think this was more a reason to talk about the singularity and Kurzweil etc.

I still think it's a very lopsided understanding of the future.

Actually I find every public mention of the singularity interesting. Especially the 4 lines about fai :)