After all, human beings have proven uniquely capable of interpreting the world around us and using the information we pick up to effect change. If we want to build machines to help us do this more efficiently, then it makes sense to use ourselves as a blueprint. Research into applied, specialized AI is already providing breakthroughs in fields of study from quantum physics where it is used to model and predict the behavior of systems comprised of billions of subatomic particles, to medicine where it being used to diagnose patients based on genomic data. Generalized AI is a bit further off—to carry out a complete simulation of the human brain would require both a more complete understanding of the organ than we currently have, and more computing power than is commonly available to researchers.