# Differentiable Programming Is Rewriting Artificial Intelligence by David Dalrymple > “Over the past few years, a raft of classic challenges in artificial intelligence which had stood unsolved for decades were conquered, almost without warning, through an approach long disparaged by AI purists for its "statistical" flavor: it's essentially about learning probability distributions from large volumes of data, rather than examining humans' problem-solving techniques and attempting to encode them in executable form. The formidable tasks it has solved range from object classification and speech recognition, to generating descriptive captions for photos and synthesizing images in the style of famous artists—even guiding robots to perform tasks for which they were never programmed!” > **— David Dalrymple**, *2016, Edge Annual Question, “What Do You Consider The Most Interesting Recent [Scientific] News? What Makes It Important?”* ## Sources and Context - **Direct Edge response and surrounding essay:** [Differentiable Programming](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/26794) — Edge published this exact passage in its 2016 Annual Question collection, *WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER THE MOST INTERESTING RECENT [SCIENTIFIC] NEWS? WHAT MAKES IT IMPORTANT?*. The response page preserves the surrounding argument and qualifications. - **Complete local collection index:** [[research/Edge 2016 Full Quotation Curation|Edge 2016 Full Quotation Curation]] — retained source-first record for the complete response cohort and this passage's promotion status. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - **Article:** [[articles/Modern Artificial Intelligence in the 1970s|AI in the 1970s]] - **Article:** [[articles/Christopher Nolan's Odyssey at the Threshold of Machine Succession|Nolan's Odyssey]] - **Article:** [[articles/Cyber-Physical Lessons from Imperial Beekeeping|Cyber-Physical Beekeeping]] - **Wiki map:** [[wiki/Artificial Intelligence|Artificial Intelligence]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Artificial Intelligence|Artificial Intelligence]] - [[wiki/human-machine interaction|human-machine interaction]] - [[wiki/Cybernetic Control|Cybernetic Control]] - [[wiki/Machine Learning|Machine Learning]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “Over the past few years, a raft of classic challenges in artificial intelligence which had stood unsolved for decades were conquered, almost without warning, through an approach long disparaged by AI purists for its "statistical" flavor: it's essentially about learning probability distributions from large volumes of data, rather than examining humans' problem-solving techniques and attempting to encode them in executable form. The formidable tasks it has solved range from object classification and speech recognition, to generating descriptive captions for photos and synthesizing images in the style of famous artists—even guiding robots to perform tasks for which they were never programmed!” — David Dalrymple, 2016, Edge Annual Question, “What Do You Consider The Most Interesting Recent [Scientific] News? What Makes It Important?” https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-david-dalrymple-differentiable-programming-rewriting-artificial-intelligence ```