实际上对真正的人工智能的探索已经产生了诸多不同的效果。虽然在20世纪60年代和70年代人们有过一段乐观的时期——那时候人们认为晶体管电路和微处理器的发展似乎将使他们在2010年能够模仿人类大脑的活动——但是最近研究人员已经把这个预测延后数十年，甚至数百年。
在试图建造思维模型的过程中，研究人员发现，人类大脑中的近1000亿个神经细胞远比以前想像的更聪明，人类的认知能力也比以前想像的更复杂。他们制造的机器人在严格控制的工厂环境里，能够在仪表盘上识别毫米以下的误差。但是人的大脑能够扫描一个快速变化的场景，迅速排除98%的不相干部分，立即聚焦于森林中婉蜒道路旁的一只猴子、或者人群中的一张可疑的脸。这点连地球上最先进的计算机系统也望尘莫及，而且神经学科学家至今仍然不知道我们是怎样做到这一点的。
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Could the bad old days of economic decline be about to return? Since OPEC agreed to supply-cuts in March, the price of crude oil has jumped to almost $26 a barrel, up from less than $10 last December. This near-tripling of oil prices calls up scary memories of the 1973 oil shock, when prices quadrupled, and 1979-80, when they also almost tripled. Both previous shocks resulted in double-digit inflation and global economic decline. So where are the headlines warning of gloom and doom this time?
The oil price was given another push up this week when Iraq suspended oil exports. Strengthening economic growth, at the same time as winter grips the northern hemisphere, could push the price higher still in the short term.
Yet there are good reasons to expect the economic consequences now to be less severe than in the 1970s. In most countries the cost of crude oil now accounts for a smaller share of the price of petrol than it did in the 1970s. In Europe, taxes account for up to four-fifths of the retail price, so even quite big changes in the price of crude have a more muted effect on pump prices than in the past.
Rich economies are also less dependent on oil than they were, and so less sensitive to swings in the oil price. Energy conservation, a shift to other fuels and a decline in the importance of heavy, energy-intensive industries have reduced oil consumption. Software, consultancy and mobile telephones use far less oil than steel or car production. For each dollar of GDP (in constant prices) rich economies now use nearly 50% less oil than in 1973. The OECD estimates in its latest Economic Outlook that, it oil prices averaged $22 a barrel for a full year, compared with $13 in 1998, this would increase the oil import bill in rich economies by only 0.25-0.5% of GDP. That is less than one-quarter of the income loss in 1974 or 1980. On the other hand, oil-importing emerging economies—to which heavy industry has shifted—have become more energy-intensive, and so could be more seriously squeezed.
One more reason not to lose sleep over the rise in oil prices is that, unlike the rises in the 1970s, it has not occurred against the background of general commodity-price inflation and global excess demand. A sizable portion of the world is only just emerging from economic decline. The Economist’s commodity price index is broadly unchanging from a year ago. In 1973 commodity prices jumped by 70%, and in 1979 by almost 30%.
