As a society, we've all seen the arrival of AI in everyday life. Our phones can do a thousand incredible things. They can recognize our fingerprints, recognize our faces, and recognize our voices. Smart assistants can learn our likes, our dislikes, and our patterns of behavior. They can take a question and search hundreds of millions of documents to find the most likely answer. My kids seem to love asking our smart speaker what 100 factorial is, and listen aghast as it trots out the 158-digit answer. "How can a computer do that?" they ask, incredulous. With all the leaps in technology over recent decades, surely there is little that computers and AI can't do?

You'll be glad to hear that the human race is not finished yet, as AI is way behind in a massive number of areas that are much more difficult for computers to handle.

It is important to note that the things computers find easy are the things that humans find hardest -- multiplying large numbers, memorizing long lists, performing endless repetitive tasks. That's what makes them impressive, doesn't it? But, and here's the key, the things that computers find hardest are the things that humans do without even blinking. Think about it -- walking up a flight of stairs, catching a ball, telling whether someone's unhappy, having a conversation in a noisy room. No sweat for a human, but these are some of the hardest problems that AI researchers have had to think about.

But it gets worse for AI: computers are fantastic at following instructions. We've even managed to teach them how to learn by example -- give it a load of songs and ask it to create "more stuff like that." Computers writing songs? Impressive. But when it comes to creativity, humans are a long way ahead. Great leaps forward in arts, sciences, technology come when people think in ways that no one else ever has -- you don't get a Nobel Prize or an Oscar for creating "more stuff like that."

So why are humans able to do these things without effort? Well, because they're all problems we've had to deal with since we emerged from the oceans. Even a mouse needs to run and avoid capture or determine from sight whether a berry is edible or not. Evolution has rewarded creatures that can solve problems that the rest of their species can't for over three billion years. So no wonder its second nature to us.

So what can't AI do? Well, just innovation, planning, creativity, empathy, artistry, morality, agility, wisdom, judgment, compassion, and ... well ... humanity. But that's not surprising, we've had a three-billion year head start.

At Micro Focus IDOL, we have embraced the limitations of AI. IDOL is built to ingest and analyze incomprehensible amounts of information to deliver deep insights for humans to understand and act on. Learn more about IDOL and its latest AI innovations today.