First Steps to a Machine Brain

The race to Artificial Intelligence is a grueling, sweaty marathon that human beings have been running for over 80 years. We’ve faced steep climb after steep climb, the gradients cranking higher every time we run into a new funding gap or technological roadblock. Recent advances in deep learning and neural networks are leading some to wonder if we might, finally, be approaching the finishing line.

We were all impressed when Google’s DeepMind computer beat a human at the game of Go. This was the first breakthrough of artificial neural networks that captured popular imagination…