Will AI Address Engineering Grand Challenges?

The statement of the challenges alone is interesting.

Jeff Dean Thinks AI Can Solve Grand Challenges–Here’s How
Alex Woodie in Datanami

In 2008, the National Academy of Engineering presented 14 Grand Challenges that, if solved, had the potential to radically improve the world. Thanks to recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence – specifically, the advent of deep neural networks — we’re on pace to solve some of them, Google Senior Fellow Jeff Dean said last week at the Strata Data Conference.

The Academy certainly didn’t lack for ambition 10 years ago when it drew up the 14 Grand Challenges. Delivering a solution for any one of them – such as providing energy from nuclear fusion or finding out how to sequester carbon – could have a dramatic impact billions of people’s lives.

As a result of advances in deep learning techniques, the presence of enormous data collections, and the availability of massive server clusters, we will be able to compute our way toward solving them, Dean told a packed room of attendees during his presentation Thursday afternoon at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center. ... "