What this means for machine learning is significant: we now have more than enough data to truly start training our machines. Think of the number of photos on Facebook and you start to understand why their facial recognition technology is so accurate. There is now no major barrier (that we currently know of) preventing A.I. from achieving its potential.
We are only just starting to work out what we can do with it. When the computers will think for themselves There is a famous scene from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey where Dave, the main character, is slowly disabling the artificial intelligence mainframe (called “Hal”) after the latter has malfunctioned and decided to try and kill all the humans on the space station it was meant to be running. Hal, the A.I., protests Dave’s actions and eerily proclaims that it is afraid of dying.