What are some impressive algorithms or software in the world of AI?

Question

I have always loved the idea of AI and evolutionary algorithms. Unfortunately, as we all know, the field hasn\'t developed nearly as fast as expected in the early days.

Answer 1

You might be asking an incomplete question. You are saying "what are great answers", but just like the Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, when the best computer gives "42" as an answer, you want to know what is the question.

There are some "best questions" that drive some great answers. Some really useful answers are in things that look mundane. The "traveling salesman problem" means a lot of cost or money for FedEx. Dijkstra's algorithm drives the paths packets on the internet actually follow.

De'Morgans laws are quite cool too - they allow minimization of gates in computer chips to do the same job. They are automated and work on the billions of gates in computer chips. It likely touches as much as a third of a trillion dollars in computer-hardware based value-creation per year. I'm not talking what people do with them, I'm just talking "them".

These may seem mundane, but they are neat to me.

I also like the evolutionary antenna. I'm pretty sure that when Musk says that AI presents an existential threat, he is referring to the power of evolutionary algorithms. There is a much more modern version of that on one of the Mars rovers - and humans couldn't invent it (alone), but they can set up computers that can.