What should I do in life? What is this all about? As a teenager I didn’t feel smart enough to figure out the answers and as an adult I still don’t, but it did occur to me if there’s one thing that humans are known for it’s building tools to overcome their natural limitations and solve problems they couldn’t otherwise. Well then why not build a tool that could do the thinking and figure out everything for me?
A somewhat flippant answer to the question “what would you wish for if you found a genie in a bottle” is to wish for infinite wishes. Artificial intelligence is kind of like that, it’s a problem if solved could then be used to solve all other problems. I was explaining my interest in artificial intelligence to a friend who had just described his desire to build the “perfect school” and he quickly said what I was trying to do is build the “perfect tool”, which as a description is just…perfect.