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What complex entomological task can an AI system perform better than humans?

Answer: placing when Beatles songs were recorded

An artificially intelligent system developed by scientists at Lawrence Technological University converts audio into visual representations called spectrograms, and analyzes it. Through identification of about 3,000 different traits in the images, the system accurately placed when a particular song by The Beatles was recorded, all based off the band’s long-term style progression.

The album Let It Be was the band’s last, but the AI system recognized that the songs contained on that album were recorded earlier than those found on Abbey Road. Similarly, the system can see that the band’s 10th studio album, Help!, was recorded before their sixth album, Rubber Soul.

Most people can’t do that without prior knowledge, Assistant Professor Lior Shamir told Phys.org. While the project is perhaps just a passing novelty to fans of music and computers, the work also represents an impending future where machines can replace not just humans who perform menial tasks, but those who rely on intuition, too.