Predictions like this are always part of a claim for further funds, just as the current round of semantic search snake-oil which has seen Microsoft hoover up Powerset in its fruitless pursuit of search superiority.
What is intelligence though? This question continues to trouble the realm of Artificial Intelligence and other machine-semantic initiatives. My calculator is undoubtedly more intelligent than me when it comes to calculating numbers. And computers regularly outperform humans at quite sophisticated things like chess. But is that intelligence? If chess is the measure of intelligence then most people in the UK would be classed as unintelligent, as would whole cultures which don't play chess.
Some of the problems lie in the meanings attached to the words. Expert systems are only expert if what they do reflects expertise. Making a diagnosis for example, where machines often outperform doctors. But what expert systems lack, at least currently and maybe forever, is the capacity to deal effectively with wholesale uncertainty, something human doctors do quite well.
Anyway, the distinction between human and machine intelligence is narrowing all the time. But perhaps not so quickly - as an example of machine based intelligence in the BBC report indicates:
Joshua Smith, a principal engineer at Intel's Seattle research lab, showed a robotic arm that could sense an apple placed in front of its claw, grasp the object and then drop it into an outstretched hand.
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