What Are the Capabilities of Artificial Intelligence?

In recent years, advances in computer processing power and the availability of suitable programming environments and algorithms have made it possible to solve some Artificial Intelligence subtasks in a satisfactory manner. This chapter provides an informal overview of the state of the art. Of particular importance here is the interpretation of sensor data, such as recognizing objects in photos, diagnosing diseases from images, or transcribing spoken language into text. There has also been progress in analyzing the meaning of language, e.g., machine translation from one language to another, answering questions by an AI system, or conducting meaningful dialogues by intelligent assistants. Finally, AI systems have been able to beat human experts at computer games, automatically drive vehicles in real-world traffic, or perform creative acts, such as inventing new stories. The techniques used will be explained in later chapters.