Year after year, blockbuster films are replete with Turing-test-passing examples of AI — and this past year was no exception. From Blade Runner 2049 to Marjorie Prime to Star Wars: The Last Jedi, it seems the public’s appetite for depictions of truly intelligent AI is insatiable.
This tendency to dream of overly optimistic futures when it comes to technology is hardly relegated to the movies. In 2016, publications including Wired, Forbes, and, yes, VentureBeat, eagerly predicted a year where “machines will win” and AI will spark “the beginning of a new internet.” However, while there have been massive advances in AI this year, particularly in semantic recognition, the future the media predicted is far from realized.
