What we can expect from the next 100 years of artificial intelligence

Artificial Intelligence research has a long history. Alan Turing proposed the Turing Test way back in 1950. Today, AI is increasingly part of our everyday lives, and it's clear that AI is here for the long haul. That's why Stanford University is leading the One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence, which will bring together researchers at the forefront of creating the next wave of artificial intelligence technologies.

Peter Stone is a professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin and Chair of the first AI100 study panel. He says it's "sort of a longitudinal study taking stock of what's the current state of the field. The current accomplishments, the current challenges.  And the idea is to have subsequent studies every five years or so."

One challenge facing the study is that the meaning of artificial intelligence is a moving target. "There's no really clear definition of what artificial intelligence is, Peter says. "It's not one thing. But one way we can sometimes describe it is, it's the field of computer science that's designed to get the computers to do the things that they can't do yet... Once we do succeed in getting computers to do something then it stops being AI."

The AI100 has just released their first report. It looks at the likely impact of artificial intelligence on urban life in a typical North American city by the year 2030.