What AI Can (and Cannot) Do

AI can do some truly amazing things. It also gets things wrong in funny or surprising ways, so let us look at both.

Things AI is brilliant at

• Spotting patterns in huge amounts of information, faster than any human can
• Translating languages. Google Translate handles over 100 of them
• Recognising images. AI can look at an X-ray and help doctors spot problems
• Playing games. AI has beaten world champions at chess, Go and even video games

Things AI struggles with

• Common sense. AI can fail at simple puzzles a young child would solve easily
• Understanding feelings. AI cannot truly feel happy, sad, excited or bored
• New situations. If something is very different from what it learned on, AI gets confused
• Making things up. AI sometimes says wrong things very confidently, which is called hallucinating

The key takeaway

AI is a powerful tool for specific jobs, but it is not magic and it is definitely not perfect. The best results come from humans and AI working together!