‘Artificial Intelligence’ Has Become Meaningless – The Atlantic (Mar 6, 2017)

I’m actually linking to two articles here. The Atlantic article explicitly argues that there’s AI-washing going on and that lots of things are being described as AI which are in reality just computer programs. The Axios article is a little more neutral, pointing instead to a rapid rise in mentions of AI on earnings calls, and taking the upward trend more or less at face value, while attempting to explain what is enabling all the activity in the AI field at the moment. I think they’re both worth reading, but there’s no doubt in my mind that the AI term and its cousin machine learning are being over-applied at the moment, which risks devaluing true AI and real achievements it’s enabling. At least part of the rapid spike in AI mentions Axios cites is down to this over-application and a bandwagon-jumping mentality that serves no one well (least of all investors suckered into believing their investment is in AI and not just bog standard software). Unfortunately, there’s no way to stop this at this point, and I think the problem will only worsen, which will make it that much harder for companies to truly differentiate on the basis of AI claims. But it also reinforces my argument that companies really need to show and not just tell when it comes to AI – real user benefit and not AI capability itself is the key.

via The Atlantic and Axios (see also the Google is Ahead in AI and Apple is Behind in AI narratives)


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