Microsoft’s co-founder Paul Allen wrote: “These days, I’m disinclined to invest in completely open-ended research. I’ve learned that creativity needs tangible goals and hard choices to have a chance to flourish.” However, last month he announced pumping an additional $125 million into his nonprofit computer research lab for an ambitious new effort to teach machines “common sense.” The money for the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence will about double the lab’s budget over the next three years, helping to fund existing research as well as the new effort, called Project Alexandria. In the years and decades to come, the lab hopes to create a database of fundamental knowledge that humans take for granted but machines have always lacked. Read more