Humans use common sense to fill in the gaps of any question they are posed, delivering answers within an understood but non-explicit context. Peter Clark, the lead researcher on ARC, explained in a statement, "Machines do not have this common sense, and thus only see what is explicitly written, and miss the many implications and assumptions that underlie a piece of text."

The test asks basic multiple-choice questions that draw from general knowledge. For example, one ARC question is: "Which item below is not made from a material grown in nature?" The possible answers are a cotton shirt, a wooden chair, a plastic spoon and a grass basket.

If machine learning can successfully pass the Arc Reasoning Challenge, it would mean that the system has a grasp of the common sense that no AI currently possesses. It would be a huge step forward, leading to smarter artificial intelligence, and move these systems closer to one day taking over the world.