Conversation starter: Machine learning in one sentence

I'm trying to work out why computers are so stupid, and stop them.

I work on detecting and exploiting interesting patterns in data.

My line is "I do Artificial Intelligence". To most people it sounds like rocket science. It also has some The Matrix/Terminator/I Robot flavor.

I think that "I teach computers how to learn" is more indicative of the chicken or the egg nature of the problem.

I'm involved in the creation of our eventual overlords.

i would start with the abstract to one of your papers, then keep iterating over it and simplifying it until you think your target audience can comprehend it, then say that sentence to him/her<p>that way, you stand a chance of preserving at least a part of what you're <i>actually</i> doing rather than stating a hand-wavy "I help computers to think"