How to Create a Mind

I recently read a book by Ray Kurzweil where he states that today's artificial intelligence (AI), like that found in Watson, is not artificial.  Today's AI recognizes patterns and analyzes them hierarchically, just as it is argued, the human brain does. Machines can learn on their own after being set up with some learning algorithms (just like the human mind which is set up to learn following instructions it acquires from DNA).  Systems like Watson have read huge volumes of information that are available online such as all of Wikipedia, using natural language to teach itself.

What used to be thought of as off limits for machines--knowledge work--is now squarely within its capabilities. How does this change what we teach and how we teach? Does it matter?

AI and machine learning are finding their way into a variety of applications. It can be found in cars that learn to drive (safely), in speech recognition software, in facial recognition, search and recommendations, and many others. While these are amazing technologies, they are also very disruptive. Many jobs that we take for granted right now may not be around for too much longer. Some examples are drivers (taxi, mail delivery, truckers...), displaced by autonomous vehicles. Or translators, displaced by machine translation. Or paralegals sifting through documents for discovery. How will a system like Watson change medicine? Who will have the better medical diagnosis: Watson, who has read every medical journal available, every newsfeed published online, calculated millions of possibilities using advanced statistical analyses (unhindered by emotion), looked at the most recent disease patterns using geographic information systems... or your doctor? Who will make better financial decisions, Watson, or your financial consultant?  My guess it's that it will be those who can skillfully use machines to extend their capabilities--what's been called the cyborg advantage.  At least for now.

"...our assumptions about what machines can and cannot do are urgently in need of updating." source

Machine learning:

The Google brain assembled a dreamlike digital image of a cat by employing a hierarchy of memory locations to successively cull out general features after being exposed to millions of images. The scientists said, however, that it appeared they had developed a cybernetic cousin to what takes place in the brain’s visual cortex. source

"Never before in the history of computing has a machine been able to so precisely answer such a wide breadth of questions in such a short time." (from video below)
"Watson knows what it knows, and knows what it doesn't know." [self awareness?] (from video below)