I don’t think, as other people might, that we don’t know how to do [AGI] and we’re waiting for some enormous breakthrough. I don’t think that’s the case, I think we do know how to do it, we just need to prove that.
FOUNDER, ELEMENTAL COGNITION DIRECTOR OF APPLIED AI, BRIDGEWATER ASSOCIATES
David Ferrucci built and led the IBM Watson team from its inception to its landmark success in 2011 when Watson defeated the greatest Jeopardy! players of all time. In 2015 he founded his own company, Elemental Cognition, focused on creating novel AI systems that dramatically accelerate a computer’s ability to understand language.
MARTIN FORD: How did you become interested in computers? What’s the path that led you to AI?
DAVID FERRUCCI: I started back before computers were an everyday term. My parents wanted me to become a medical doctor, and my dad hated the fact that I would be home during the school holidays without anything to do. In the summer of my junior year at high...