Dive Brief:
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Artificial intelligence (AI) programs made by Alibaba and Microsoft outperformed humans during a Stanford University reading comprehension test, reports CNN.
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Alibaba's deep neural program just beat out the score of its human counterpart at 82.44 to 82.304. However, the next day, Microsoft's AI software beat both Alibaba's and the humans' scores with 82.650. The test required participants to answer more than 100,000 questions derived from 500 Wikipedia articles, reports SiliconBeat.
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This accomplishment of AI is indicative of "how far along the AI journey we may be," according to Andrew Pickup, a Microsoft spokesperson, reports CNN. But "the real benefit of AI is when it is used in harmony with humans."
Dive Insight:
AI continues to hit milestone after milestone, perhaps at a pace that keeps Elon Musk up at night. Regardless of the stance individuals take on the potential robot apocalypse, AI is simplifying business practices and increasing productivity.
The technology is expected to reclaim about 6.2 billion hours of productivity and add about $2.9 trillion in business value. AI is widely viewed as the next stage of digital transformation, and those resistant to implementing it in business practices could become digital laggards.
Companies such as Alibaba and Microsoft are rapidly improving AI offerings as adoption of AI solutions increases. In August, Microsoft's deep learning software improved to human parity in a "conversational speech recognition task."
Such accomplishments will improve human interactions, though AI understanding different accents and the substance of speech is still difficult for many researchers.