Machine intelligence has been steadily progressing since the invention of the digital computer, but this progress has arguably been accelerating of late, with widespread deployment of machine learning systems and dramatically increased funding of artificial intelligence research.
Machine intelligence long surpassed human capability in numerical computation, application of algorithms, data processing, and games such as checkers and chess. In 2005-2015 dramatic improvements in image recognition and classification, speech transcription, game playing (e.g. Go and classic Atari), and automatic translation across many languages have approached or surpassed human levels. As of 2015 there is still a large gulf, however, in many intellectual capabilities. But for how long?