To accompany feature “AI can guide us — or just entertain”

SCIENCE

Before Reading: 

1. When someone mentions “artificial intelligence,” what comes to mind?

2. Name at least three places where you might find artificial intelligence at work.

During Reading: 

1. What is “natural language” processing?

2. How many Go moves did AlphaGo observe to learn how to win at this game?

3. How well do recommendations made by Watson for Oncology compare to those made by human doctors?

4. Why does Joel Rosiene argue that AI will not do away with the need for doctors in the next 10 years, at least?

5. How does Mathia help students — and does that help compare to classroom lessons or tutoring one-on-one with a teacher?

6. What did Harold Cohen develop AARON to do?

7. Why did he argue that it was truly creative?

8. What argument does Dan Ventura offer to challenge that claim?

After Reading: 

1. Brainstorm with a partner about three new applications for AI that could help you or others your age improve your performance or skills in some regard.

2. AI is an important area of research and offers good opportunities for creative careers. Do some research and find out what training AI developers need, how much they typically earn and at least three industries that already depend on AI.

3. From what you’ve learned in the article, how accurate is it to call the machine learning and decision-making typical of AI as “intelligence?” How does it differ from human intelligence?