I think we should think of AI as the intellectual equivalent of a backhoe. It will be much better than us at a lot of things.

Backhoes can save us a lot of digging. But of course, you can misuse it.

You look at these past predictions like there's only a market in the world for five computers [as allegedly said by IBM founder Thomas Watson] and you realize it's not a good idea to predict too far into the future.

I think we should think of AI as the intellectual equivalent of a backhoe. It will be much better than us at a lot of things.

As soon as you have good mechanical technology, you can make things like backhoes that can dig holes in the road. But of course a backhoe can knock your head off. But you don't want to not develop a backhoe because it can knock your head off, that would be regarded as silly.

I think people need to understand that deep learning is making a lot of things, behind-the-scenes, much better. Deep learning is already working in Google search, and in image search; it allows you to image search a term like "hug."

In the brain, you have connections between the neurons called synapses, and they can change. All your knowledge is stored in those synapses. You have about 1,000-trillion synapses - 10 to the 15, it's a very big number.