Open Questions in AI: teacher key

Artificial Intelligence, grade 12 edition, written for 12th grade and up. What is AI? Explore how researchers define it, a contrast between logic-based and brain-modeled AI, how neural networks and transformers work, what the 2026 AI Index found about tests, and what is still argued.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. What does dry, logic-based AI contrast with?
   • Approaches that directly model brain circuitry (answer)
   • Approaches that use only chess
   • Approaches that avoid computers
2. Why is the starting date of AI a matter of how the field is defined?
   • Dartmouth was cancelled
   • AI work was already going on before 1956 (answer)
   • Nobody wrote down the date
3. What is a transformer based on?
   • Recurrence
   • Convolutions
   • Attention (answer)
4. What did the philosophy encyclopedia say AlphaGo could not do?
   • Read the rules of Go in plain English and write a program that plays (answer)
   • Play any game at all
   • Beat a person at Go
5. What did most people say in the 2025 survey about scaling up current AI approaches?
   • They said it is likely to lead to general intelligence
   • They said it is unlikely or very unlikely to lead to general intelligence (answer)
   • They did not answer

Words

• transformer: attention-based model
• confabulation: made-up content
• backpropagation: training method
• neuroscience: brain science
• saturated: no longer challenging