The hype around artificial intelligence is building – but we don't yet know if it will fulfil its potential

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IN FROM three to eight years, we will have a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being. I mean a machine that will be able to read Shakespeare, grease a car, play office politics, tell a joke, have a fight. At that point the machine will begin to educate itself with fantastic speed. In a few months it will be at genius level, and a few months after that, its powers will be incalculable.

Such rumours of superhuman artificial intelligence have been doing the rounds lately, but this prediction doesn’t come from …