Everyone has that one fact they tell people when they want to blow their minds. Some of the best mind-blowing facts come from scientists, and artificial-intelligence researchers have some amazing ones.
Tech Insider talked to 13 AI researchers, roboticists, and computer scientists and asked what were the most surprising facts that they learned during their careers.
Scroll down to see their lightly edited responses.
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Matthew Taylor is wowed by how many times AI has outperformed humans.
"For me, it's the fact that computers can outperform humans at a number of tasks — and there are more and more things they can beat us at. There will always be things that humans can do better, but it's increasingly impressive the number of things that computers can do better than us.
"There's 'Jeopardy,' where the machine was able to outperform the top 'Jeopardy' contestants. There's games like backgammon, poker, and chess. Now computers are [beating humans at] the game of Go.
"The game of Go is something that people for a while thought that computers would never be able to do well in. Now computers are able to play."
Commentary from Matthew Taylor, a computer scientist at Washington State University.
Yann LeCun says he's amazed at how the simplest ideas always work.
"I will repeat what Geoffrey Hinton told me, following a talk I gave shortly after I left his lab and joined Bell Labs: 'If you do all the sensible things, it actually works.'
"The mind-blowing fact is that the simplest ideas work, and they become totally obvious in hindsight, but convincing the research community at large of what you consider obvious is far from easy."
Commentary from Yann LeCun, Facebook's artificial-intelligence research director.
Hector Geffner is in awe of theories that define how the world works.
"I grew up at a time when relativity and quantum mechanics were the cream of the crop of science. With time, I've learned to appreciate 'simpler' theories that probably have a much more direct influence in our lives and our identities.
"In particular, Darwin's theory of evolution and Turing's theory of computation. These are simple but profound theories with high reaching consequences."
Commentary from Hector Geffner, an AI researcher at Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
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