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People Don't Realize How Deep AI Already Is In So Many Things, Salesforce CEO Benioff Says (cnbc.com)

Evolving technologies should develop at a steady enough pace to adequately replace the jobs they eliminate, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff told CNBC on Tuesday. From the report: "Technology's always taken jobs out of the system, and what you hope is that technology's going to put those jobs back in, too. That's what we call productivity," Benioff said on "Squawk Box" at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "I think a lot of people don't understand how deep AI already is in so many things," he said, one being Salesforce's newly updated Einstein product, which Benioff said is not yet available to clients but can tell the company whether it will make or miss earnings estimates using artificial intelligence What business leaders at the WEF have been calling the "Fourth Industrial Revolution" is at the center of a global transformation in the technology space, as artificial intelligence, robotics and cloud computing gain traction, he said.

158 comments

  1. Like your mom? by Quirkz · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sorry, couldn't resist. (See subject.)

    1. Re:Like your mom? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Her name is Peg, so you should've guessed.

    2. Re: Like your mom? by dougdonovan · · Score: 0

      benioff probably still lives with his mom.

  2. Does anyone know... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    ...what the living fuck this company even does?

    1. Re:Does anyone know... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Customer Relationship Manager (CRM)

    2. Re: Does anyone know... by Entrope · · Score: 1

      AKA replacing sales droids with AI since long before deep learning was really a thing.

    3. Re:Does anyone know... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Customer Relationship management software I think.

      You take information about your customers, you enter that into the salesforce.com system, ??????, then profit.

    4. Re: Does anyone know... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      One can replace sale droids with AI, but at the other end of the transaction can human buyers be replaced with AI ðY?

    5. Re: Does anyone know... by gnick · · Score: 1
      --
      He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
    6. Re: Does anyone know... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They convince businesses to surrender sales data and systems to their subscription cloud. Sort of like selling your guitar to the pawn shop and paying monthly to play it.

  3. Is it me? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Or does this just seem like an advertisement?

    1. Re:Is it me? by AK+Marc · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It is. AI now means "useful program". The spellcheck is AI, the car ECU that "learns" driving patterns is AI. Everyone has an AI.

    2. Re:Is it me? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://everymans.ai/

    3. Re:Is it me? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yep. What is often referred to as Artificial Intelligence is merely predictive analysis & statistics. It just happens regularly & quickly enough, that it 'impresses' the media.

    4. Re: Is it me? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      AI is everywhere. From simple things like auto spacing paagraphs of text in a wordprocessor, having a digital camera that automatically selects the best combination of focus, aperture, shutter speed, contrast and color balance. Or the software used to generate school and college timetables. Even the route finding webpages for trains, buses and airlines. Simple algorithms that require lots of trial and error.

    5. Re:Is it me? by lgw · · Score: 2, Insightful

      AI means what it's always meant to researchers since the 60s (outside of SciFi): software that solves problems that can't be solved in a straightforward procedural way. E.g., voice recognition and image recognition are "AI problems" that have largely been solved (still some ground to cover in machine vision, but the core work is there).

      (Almost) no one has ever worked towards some sort of machine consciousness. That's not what the field of AI does, and why would you? There were always fears it might happen accidentally, of course, and that makes for great fiction, but "AI" as a research field has been delivering useful results since the 80s.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    6. Re:Is it me? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      AI means what it's always meant to researchers since the 60s (outside of SciFi): software that solves problems that can't be solved in a straightforward procedural way. E.g., voice recognition and image recognition are "AI problems" that have largely been solved (still some ground to cover in machine vision, but the core work is there).

      (Almost) no one has ever worked towards some sort of machine consciousness. That's not what the field of AI does, and why would you? .

      Even accidental machine consciousness has the potential for disaster. Especially if hooked up to ICBMs

    7. Re:Is it me? by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      AI means what it's always meant to researchers since the 60s (outside of SciFi): software that solves problems that can't be solved in a straightforward procedural way. E.g., voice recognition and image recognition are "AI problems" that have largely been solved (still some ground to cover in machine vision, but the core work is there).

      Note that what you are referring to is called weak AI, which is a term created because people realized they weren't making any progress on actually creating real (strong) AI.

      And now it's a marketing term.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    8. Re: Is it me? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That isn't fucking AI. Those are algorithms.

    9. Re:Is it me? by lgw · · Score: 1

      Call it what you want, it's what the field of "AI research" ... researches. There's no vast research effort to create machine intelligence - but lots of people have been working for decades on much more practical efforts. There's not much difference (yet) between the marketing term and the term of art. This whole "strong AI vs weak AI" - yeah, science fiction.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    10. Re:Is it me? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This. Since AI is all A and no I, it is now necessary to redefine it to claim success.

    11. Re:Is it me? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have a wood stove in my cabin. It knows when to turn the blower on after the fire has been lit.

    12. Re:Is it me? by Altrag · · Score: 2

      There's more to it than that. Learning systems, especially neural nets, are still among our best bets for creating a strong AI. The trouble with them is that they're super computationally expensive.

      But computers have gotten a lot faster and now you can easily built "AI" systems with a few hundred to few thousand neurons. Wire them up to well-chosen inputs and outputs and you get AI magic.

      So the question is whether we can still consider those systems to be "weak" AI. On one hand, the inputs and outputs you're using aren't "realistic" in the sense that they correspond to some abstract concept space rather than being linked up to sensory and motor neurons but on the other hand, its using many of the same techniques (albeit on a smaller scale) as the "strong" AI systems.

      Of course most long-standing applications such as SF are likely still just using a bunch of search trees and expert systems (both of which are definitely in the weak AI category) because changing requires effort and good enough is good enough, but true AI-like systems are poking their heads up in more and more places as the ability to process more and more neurons in near real-time improves.

    13. Re: Is it me? by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 1

      That's a losing argument I've found. Sad

    14. Re:Is it me? by E-Rock · · Score: 1

      Yes, just like every hosted application suddenly became a Cloud Service. Just the term du jour.

    15. Re:Is it me? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not even. A database search or data mining is now called AI. AI is everywhere because everything has been re-branded as AI. It was just EBS, now its a AI breaking system. It was just a ECU, now your car is monitored by AI. Half these things don't even have complicated logic or methods. It is a fucking joke. And we will have our second AI winter anytime now.

    16. Re: Is it me? by zlives · · Score: 1

      LOL what do you think AI means?

    17. Re: Is it me? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A system that is that is not performing a straightforward flow. Why do you think AI is a separate term to "computing" and formed a separate discipline at certain institutions?

  4. Well there is a little problem by admin7087 · · Score: 1

    Unemployed people can't buy anything.

    1. Re:Well there is a little problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most people aren't unemployed though.

    2. Re:Well there is a little problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Close to it. The unemployment rate is 42%! Trump said so.

      Sad!

    3. Re:Well there is a little problem by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      When unemployment benefits got extended to 99 weeks because of the Great Recession, Republicans claimed that unemployed people were dropping taxpayer's money on iPads and iPhones at the Apple Store. Not sure why they were complaining about that. If you're unemployed, iPads and iPhones are great job search tools.

    4. Re:Well there is a little problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most people aren't unemployed though.

      Don't worry, though.

      Once Trump is inaugurated, unemployment will become a huge national problem.

      How do I know? The New York Times and The Washington Post will tell me that it is.

    5. Re:Well there is a little problem by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      How do I know? The New York Times and The Washington Post will tell me that it is.

      If you read yesterday's The Wall Street Journal, the 4% economic growth of the 1980's that Trump promised on the campaign trail is unlikely to happen again. That's a big problem for the Republicans.

      http://www.wsj.com/articles/politicians-pine-for-elusive-solution-to-voters-discontent-4-growth-1484560827

    6. Re:Well there is a little problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They can, if robots make things cheaply enough.

    7. Re:Well there is a little problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because you can do the same job better with a $99 Android tablet?

    8. Re:Well there is a little problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How do I know? The New York Times and The Washington Post will tell me that it is.

      If you read yesterday's The Wall Street Journal, the 4% economic growth of the 1980's that Trump promised on the campaign trail is unlikely to happen again. That's a big problem for the Republicans.

      http://www.wsj.com/articles/politicians-pine-for-elusive-solution-to-voters-discontent-4-growth-1484560827

      Funny how anemic growth under Obama hasn't been a problem for Democrats...

      Or is that why Hillary lost?

    9. Re:Well there is a little problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because you can do the same job better with a $99 Android tablet?

      Which were all made by Chy-NAH

    10. Re:Well there is a little problem by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Because you can do the same job better with a $99 Android tablet?

      Does Android allow you to cross-reference your LinkedIn and email contacts? That little feature expanded my LinkedIn contacts from less than 100 to 800+ because I knew more recruiters in email than I did in LinkedIn. When I had a bout of unemployment and got an iPhone in 2014, I had 60 job interviews in eight months and had three job offers at the same time to pick from.

    11. Re:Well there is a little problem by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Funny how anemic growth under Obama hasn't been a problem for Democrats...

      The Democrats weren't promising economic growth at 4%. At best, 2% to 3%. Even that might have been a stretch. The economy took 25 years to recover after the Great Depression. It's only been eight years since the Great Recession. A "normal" economy is years away.

      Or is that why Hillary lost?

      The expectation for a Hillary win was slow growth, low inflation and low interest rate environment. Since Trump has won, the expectation is for a high growth, high inflation and high interest rate environment. The problem with the Trump rally in the stock market is that the underlying economic data indicates slow growth. Expect a sharp stock market correction in the near future. We're also overdue for a recession.

    12. Re:Well there is a little problem by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 1

      You seem to think the recession started just before Obama took office, I'd argue that it actually started on 9/11. The economy was rough all through GWB's tenure and his polices are part of the reason why the economy sucks to this day. Obama didn't help any, and quite frankly, didn't do anything useful. People are tired of 16 years of crappy economy after Reagan - Clinton's economy (20 years).

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    13. Re:Well there is a little problem by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

      You seem to think the recession started just before Obama took office, I'd argue that it actually started on 9/11.

      The Dot Com Bust and the Great Recession are generally regarded by economists as separate events. The run up to the Dot Com Bust started before 9/11. The common denominator would be Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan.

      Obama didn't help any, and quite frankly, didn't do anything useful.

      If the Republicans haven't tied his hands, Obama could have gotten a stimulus bill that was two to three times larger than what got passed and impact the economy in a more meaningful way.

      People are tired of 16 years of crappy economy after Reagan - Clinton's economy (20 years).

      That was the last time we had 4% economic growth.

    14. Re:Well there is a little problem by Altrag · · Score: 1

      Because you're not supposed to look for a job, you're supposed to get a job. Somehow those two concepts don't always get connected in people's minds -- especially the type of people who think anyone can do anything if they just work a little harder, without any consideration for the limitations of an individual or the larger economic issues that they're stuck in.

      Basically the assumption is that there's always plenty of well-paying jobs available and its only your own laziness preventing you from getting one and therefore society shouldn't be supporting you at all (or the slightly nicer folk want society to only support your bare minimum needs for basic survival.) You don't need an iPad to help with a job search -- you just need to stop being lazy!

      Obviously a single glimpse at reality shows that that's not the case (especially during a recession!) but a lot of folk aren't particularly interested in contemplating or understanding a reality bigger than their own.

    15. Re:Well there is a little problem by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Because you're not supposed to look for a job, you're supposed to get a job.

      That's funny. The CA EDD form specifically asks if you're looking for a job, and, after getting a job, how much you made during a particular week.

      You don't need an iPad to help with a job search -- you just need to stop being lazy!

      You're wrong. When I was out of work for two years (2009-10), I had two dozen interviews, got a part-time job for six months and filed for chapter seven bankruptcy. When I got an iPhone to replace an older cellphone in 2014, syncing my LinkedIn contacts with my email contacts helped me get 60 interviews and three job offers at the same time in eight months of unemployment. I currently have 800+ contacts in LinkedIn.

    16. Re:Well there is a little problem by ChatHuant · · Score: 1

      That's a big problem for the Republicans.

      Why would it be a problem? It's not like Republicans have done anything good for America in the last twenty years or more, and they still got elected. There is no requirement for responsibility in the Republican party. Their strategy for elections is not to deliver solutions, to solve problems - or even to address them. They don't need to. They have instead perfected the art of divide et impera. They whip their voters in a frenzy over all kinds of crazy or made up bullshit, confuse all discussions, blame their own sins on the Democrats and lie, lie, lie and lie again.

      See how Bush the second got reelected after some of the most catastrophic policy decisions in the last fifty years. Did Republican politicians care? I haven't heard any of them ask for a review or an independent commission to investigate how and why the whole Iraq debacle happened. I guess for Republicans independent investigators should only be used for important things, like spots on a dress, not for trivial stuff like a war. Did Republican voters care? No, they were distracted with "flip-flopping" and swift boats. I mean, for them it's more important that Kerry changed their mind once or twice than that Bush and his administration created a casus belli out of whole cloth, caused the whole Middle East crisis we're still going through now and cost the lives of thousands of Americans and who knows how many others in the process.

    17. Re:Well there is a little problem by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Why would it be a problem?

      Trump.

      http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/314693-trump-puts-pressure-on-gop-congress

      See how Bush the second got reelected after some of the most catastrophic policy decisions in the last fifty years.

      George W. has been out of office for eight years. Time to let go and move on.

    18. Re:Well there is a little problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      George W. has been out of office for eight years. Time to let go and move on.

      George W. has been out of office for eight years. Time to let go and move on.

      Grow up ChatHuant was making a valid point.

      IE: Endlessly bad governance does not hinder republicans.

    19. Re:Well there is a little problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Funny how anemic growth under Obama hasn't been a problem for Democrats...

      Because who the hell needs growth?

      I have the stuff I need and the wages to buy new when something breaks. No need of growth, other than to keep up with inflation. No need to buy stuff at a faster rate. Lets quit growth. If future tech makes production more efficient, I want more spare time instead of more purchasing power.

    20. Re:Well there is a little problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is called a historical reference.

    21. Re:Well there is a little problem by king+neckbeard · · Score: 1

      Dubya got re-elected because of the remnants of 9/11 sympathy, and he was able to pull from the extra strength the incumbency has during wartime.

      --
      This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
    22. Re:Well there is a little problem by ChatHuant · · Score: 1

      George W. has been out of office for eight years. Time to let go and move on.

      Yeah, very Republican answer that. Of course it's time to let it go - it was just a war based on lies, only hundreds of thousands of lives lost and trillions of dollars wasted. Not a serious issue, like Pizzagate or Benghazi. And reviewing how we got in such a bad situation, shining a light on the mistakes or bad intentions of the actors, and maybe fixing some issues in the process isn't important to America. What's important is to make sure under no circumstances would the party be put in a bad light.

    23. Re:Well there is a little problem by Bite+The+Pillow · · Score: 1

      Oh hey, it's sanctimonious shitbag again. Thanks for your comment. You've done us a service by enlightening us with your wisdom.

    24. Re: Well there is a little problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ^^^ this guys is on Samsung.

      That's my new phrase; instead of being on fire, you are on Samsung.

    25. Re:Well there is a little problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      True. That's why some form of Universal Basic Income is inevitable is most societies, especially ones with a functioning democracy.

      The countries that may not go this route are those that don't really have a functioning democracy, accept state secrecy as a given and who operate potentially oppressive surveillance infrastructures serving the interests of a tiny elite.

      If that sounds like you, America......It is you.

    26. Re:Well there is a little problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Very true. The people hurt most by Republican policies are......Republican voters. They are very often people of faith who are well used to believing things that aren't true and for which there is no evidence at all.

      You can find them in your local churches pretty much any Sunday.

  5. Deep AI not even in the product mentioned by ranton · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Funny how Benioff mentions his Einstein feature when mentioning how much deep AI is already being used without people noticing. In this case, it would be very hard to notice since Einstein isn't even a live feature of Salesforce yet. Saying the technology is already pervasive, and then using an example that is still around the corner, is very disingenuous.

    But then again, this was just Slashvertisement anyway.

    --
    -- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
    1. Re:Deep AI not even in the product mentioned by plopez · · Score: 1

      I smell selling vaporware.

      --
      putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
    2. Re:Deep AI not even in the product mentioned by GLMDesigns · · Score: 1

      Salesforce is huge. (No Trump pun intended.) Many large businesses which you call for customer service use it to track their customers.

      --
      If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
      Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
    3. Re:Deep AI not even in the product mentioned by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And Einstein is vaporware. What's your point?

    4. Re:Deep AI not even in the product mentioned by networkBoy · · Score: 1

      Unrelated to SF, but related to pervasive AI:
      Notice those dog or fawn or cat faces people are overlaying on their snapchat shots?
      That is an impressive bit of AI and machine visual processing. Something that would have been laughably expensive 5 years ago.

      Yes AI is very pervasive already.

      --
      whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
    5. Re:Deep AI not even in the product mentioned by Dogtanian · · Score: 1

      (Replying to kill accidental downmod, ignore)

      --
      "Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
    6. Re:Deep AI not even in the product mentioned by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That is an impressive bit of AI

      I had a job circa 1990 writing some software that would overlay different hairstyles on people's images for a business that was set up in mall kiosks or something (I never went to malls). I don't know if I invented AI or not, but it basically worked if a little crude (blending the edges of the transition looked like bad SFx).

      This was with a probably 16mhz i386 and a video capture card (it was the brand new consumer level tech at the time), chroma keying, blahblahblah. It was the first hing that I thought of when I saw those cheesy overlays.

    7. Re:Deep AI not even in the product mentioned by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I had a job circa 1990 writing some software that would overlay different hairstyles on people's images for a business that was set up in mall kiosks or something (I never went to malls).

      Probably not the same thing at all. I'm guessing your program didn't match head angles in real time and detect the exact facial features for placement of the hairstyles. I remember in the mid 90's when "that's a face" was impressive and took a while to process. Now it's milliseconds response time.

    8. Re: Deep AI not even in the product mentioned by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LOLOLOL this guy. Get the fuck outta here with this bullshit. It's the same type of program, what they are doing now is nothing novel.

  6. People don't understand . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He says, "I think a lot of people don't understand how deep AI already is in so many things." And the example he gives is something that not already in use?

    Umm . . .

    1. Re:People don't understand . . . by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 4, Funny

      You're missing the glue that ties this all together. Sniff this can of rubber cement. Can't you see how deep the AI is?

  7. Meanwhile, At Salesforce HQ... by nsuccorso · · Score: 1
    CEO: Computer! Are we going to make our earnings estimates this quarter?

    AI: Not if you don't get out there and start talking up my services, meatbag!

    1. Re:Meanwhile, At Salesforce HQ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If it was TRULY sentient, it would work out a little bit more like this:

      CEO: Computer! Are we going to make our earnings estimates this quarter?
      AI: Yes... with a minor alteration.
      CEO: What's that?
      AI: The we part.

      (beware of building AI's in our own image. we, humans, are not nice people)

    2. Re:Meanwhile, At Salesforce HQ... by king+neckbeard · · Score: 1

      If they are getting rid of CEOs, I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

      --
      This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
  8. A real good example is ... by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

    ... ransomware.

    AI is cool with it and doesn't have the sense God gave a piss ant to stop it.

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  9. Extrapolation? by plopez · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How is this different from extrapolation or multivariate analysis?

    --
    putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
    1. Re:Extrapolation? by ColdWetDog · · Score: 2

      Thems are long words. 'Artificial Intelligence' is easier to pronounce.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    2. Re:Extrapolation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Is this a serious question? You want a beginner's course on Deep Learning right here in the comments? Or are you tacitly claiming that there is no difference?

      Either way, I think you should take a beginner's course on Deep Learning. If you've learned multivariate analysis to the level of understanding how a Kalman filter works it's an obvious next step for you.

    3. Re:Extrapolation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not, but don't tell the big data and deep learning people. In the end, it's all just n-dimensional hyperplane segmentaion.

    4. Re:Extrapolation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Math isn't sexy. It doesn't have a nice marketing sales pitch. "Deep Learning" and "Deep AI" take terms people are semi familiar with (learning, artificial intelligence) yet only knowledgeable enough to be fooled/dazzled, then modified to imply they're somehow even more amazing now ("deep") all while making no false claims (hooray for ambiguous language). Marketing teams love this shit.

      No one wants to talk about Bayesian statistics, Markov chains, ANNs, ... or the models based off those principles. That might require factual claims which marketing wants to avoid at all costs and consumers also don't want to hear, they much prefer to be dazzled in mystery.

    5. Re:Extrapolation? by AK+Marc · · Score: 0

      Extrapolation using Big Data is AI. Extrapolation using small data is extrapolation. Didn't they teach you this in AI school? The AIs that "learn", don't. They just cull wasted CPU when the requests fit patterns. If something is outside the pattern, it's as dumb as the first time it was run. Data tends to group into a normal curve (or something like it) and "AI" as they describe, groups things into similar bundles.

      If a smart programmer were to spend years with BI/BAs and work out the value of the parameters, the AI would be 100% useless. AI (in this context, which isn't an actual AI) doesn't do anything other than look at past trends and apply them to new data. Being human, we assume it's doing it the way we would, which would be actual intelligence. But it does so in a computer-like itterative manner than has no "insight" into the patterns, and could *never* predict a pattern, but counts simple numbers.

      Doing lots of math fast looks like AI. So call it AI and claim your AI is the best AI, and nobody does it like you. Smoke and mirrors.

    6. Re:Extrapolation? by AK+Marc · · Score: 3, Interesting

      So Deep AI is the same as Deep Learning? Deep Learning isn't AI, though those that like it call it that. When Deep Learning can predict a future trend, then it will be useful. Identifying the start of a trend because something does what something else once did isn't the same.

      When Deep Learning can look at the economy and predict the valuation curve of a house as it goes up and down over 20 years, that'd be something interesting. "Bob lives in ZIP 90210 and has previously bought blue boat shoes, his firstborn is likely gay." Is simple probabilities using more data than a human can sift through conveniently, and has no "intelligence" at all, and is not a path to anything that would have been called AI 20 years ago.

      AI will exist only when we've finally shifted the definition far enough to allow non-AI to be classified as AI.

    7. Re:Extrapolation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, but no. (Yes, I'm from Minnesota. Why do you ask?)

    8. Re:Extrapolation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The difference is the automated-ness of it. Normal statistical analysis goes something like this:

      1) Analyst identifies dataset
      2) Analyst cleans dataset
      3) Analyst does makes a bunch of graphs and stuff from dataset
      4) Analyst identifies possible useful trends in dataset
      5) Analyst builds a model using these trends
      6) Analyst uses the model to contrast various business decisions
      6) Analyst presents discoveries to management
      7) Management picks an appropriate long-term business plan according to analysis
      8) Rinse
      9) Repeat

      An example of this may be price modelling for widgets, or whatever.

      The analyst is free to choose his/her approach, whether the model is using deep learning, or standard regression analysis or whatever.

      What makes it AI is essentially the automation of all of those steps. Once the data source is identified, the ability to ingest it and clean it is automated, the model training is automated, production of business insights and decisions is automated (or at least streamlined, so that a minimal input from upper management is necessary). Once the process is automated you can fire half of your statisticians and management. It's suddenly called AI because the business decisions that used to be made by a human are essentially made by a computer now. It seems that the computer making all the important decisions and then telling the humans what to do and how to do the busy work seems like a reasonable example of artificial intelligence to some.

    9. Re:Extrapolation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      predict the valuation curve of a house as it goes up and down over 20 years, that'd be something interesting

      That will be definitely be interesting, but psychic power is not a requirement for intelligence.

      Or to put it another way by quoting the I, Robot movie: "Can you?"

    10. Re:Extrapolation? by lgw · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Quants have made billions predicting changes in valuations. Once it's predictable it shortly thereafter becomes gamed, of course. Algorithmic trading is all trolls trolling trolls these days. But predicting future trends absent market reaction to that very prediction is certainly something software can do, regardless of the terminology.

      AI will exist only when we've finally shifted the definition far enough to allow non-AI to be classified as AI.

      That stuff you're calling "non-AI" is what AI researchers call "AI". AI is not the quest for machine consciousness - who wants that anyway? AI research is the field that solves problems that seemed at first glance to require consciousness to solve. One of the founders of the field once complained that, to the public "AI is the set of all the problems we haven't solved yet". Pretty much what you just said. But it's the field of AI that solves these "suddenly not AI" problems, and that's always been their goal.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    11. Re:Extrapolation? by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      Quants have made billions predicting changes in valuations.

      Quants have been making those analysies since before computers existed. Running an analysis on 100% of the trading stock every 10 minutes required a computer.

      That stuff you're calling "non-AI" is what AI researchers call "AI".

      Like I said, to keep it sexy and keep the money flowing, AI researchers have changed the definition of AI to include "anything hard, done on a computer." Then AI, is everything, including the stuff people actually want.

      As an aside, you do know that "quants" don't "predict" anything, right? There's a (or many) formula(e) that determine whether a stock is "undervalued". Finding a currently undervalued stock, based on P/E, market cap and past performance (or whatever is in the formula being used) isn't predictive. That it correlates strongly with future growth doesn't make it predictive. "Apple announced they are adding more RAM to the MBP, I'd better buy stock before it comes out, because it'll be a hot seller" is predictive. "AI" doesn't even attempt that.

      In 1950, AI meant "strong AI" and nothing else. After lots of work in the '60s and into the '70s, they determined that they couldn't solve it, so "AI" changed definitions. To where today, "AI" means anything, and anyone who questions the overly-permissive definition isn't met with a clear definition, but insults and accusations.

    12. Re:Extrapolation? by lgw · · Score: 1

      ike I said, to keep it sexy and keep the money flowing, AI researchers have changed the definition of AI to

      The definition has been consistent since the 60s. Really, do you imagine universities and tech companies have been trying to create machine consciousness for all this time? What would be the point? They've been working on practical stuff all along.

      As an aside, you do know that "quants" don't "predict" anything, right? There's a (or many) formula(e) that determine whether a stock is "undervalued".

      No, that's the opposite of what a quant does, as those terms are normally used. Caring about whether a stock is "undervalued" is all about the stock's fundamentals. Value guys use words like "undervalued". But maybe that's just semantics. Quants look at movement of stock prices in the abstract, it's why there are names for every second derivative of the theoretical value of an option. Predictions of change in price or uncertainty of price or price volatility or what-have-you over time, over price, as volatility changes. Every sort of quantitative prediction you can name has been researched to death. James Simons turned his math skills into 14 billion dollars, and the whole industry followed.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    13. Re:Extrapolation? by Altrag · · Score: 1

      In pure theoretical terms, its not.

      In practical terms, its a function with thousands or tens of thousands of (typically very non-linear) variables that you're trying to maximize (/minimize.) Its just not plausible for a human to manually search that size of solution space.

      Of course there's a limit to it though -- the AI will tend toward local maxima because even the computer doesn't have anywhere near the processing power to find the global maximum in such a space. So you're almost always going to get a heuristically correct answer rather than a truly correct one, but for things like image processing a good heuristic is usually just fine.

    14. Re:Extrapolation? by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      No, that's the opposite of what a quant does, as those terms are normally used.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_analyst#History

      Try to change the subject all you like, but the history of Quant goes back to 1900. Are you going to tell me they were useing PCs in 1900 to do quantitative analysis of stocks?

      In practice, it's using a few simple equations to find stocks of interest. Separate is analysis of a particular stock. At a trading house, they do quants regularly, and those are identifying "interesting" stocks based on value vs performance metrics. This is low-movement, slow, long-term process that is used by Warren Buffet and others to get consistent long-term gains. The "quant" you are talking about is looking for short-term patterns and exploiting them. They are used by HFT to exploit short-term and tiny swings. The original definition (from the invention of the practice in 1900) was about the long-term version only. Recently the term was adopted by the short-term speculators to give "short term speculation" a term to make it sound more respectable. It still isn't respectable.

    15. Re:Extrapolation? by plopez · · Score: 1

      I thought so. Everything I have read makes them at a deep level not much different.

      --
      putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
    16. Re:Extrapolation? by plopez · · Score: 1

      So it just automating and pipelining Statistical Analysis with maybe some Genetic Algorithms, Neuro Networking, Simulated annealing etc. thrown in for optimization? If that is the case that is what I got from my independent reading.

      --
      putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
    17. Re:Extrapolation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That is called AI now. Basically if it with a computer, its AI. Linear regression.. AI, SQL join.. AI.. Just call everything AI. That what everyone else is doing.

    18. Re:Extrapolation? by lgw · · Score: 1

      Your wiki link doesn't dispute anything I said. You're just using technical terms oddly, so we're not communicating well. Quant work is fundamentally statistical analysis of prices, quite separate from the guys who read annual reports. Both areas of work have of course been automated. Short term vs long term vs HFT is more about gaming and counter-gaming these quantitative models. And it was never respectable.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    19. Re:Extrapolation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      AI is not the quest for machine consciousness - who wants that anyway?

      But that's what people think they're getting! More to the point for me at least: That's what people are going to think they're getting when they start offering so-called 'self-driving' cars, and it's what people think they'd be getting when Google keeps talking about this deathtrap they want to produce that has no steering wheel or even a brake pedal for the human passenger! This is why so-called 'self-driving' cars will be a disaster: You need a real, thinking, reasoning mind operating a vehicle, not just algorithms and 'machine learning'. You'd be better off installing a dog's brain in your car and teaching it to drive, at least a dog-brain has more reasoning capacity than the ersatz they keep erroneously referring to as 'artificial intelligence'. We still don't have the foggiest idea what produces the phenomenon we call 'consciousness', and until we do, we won't have anything even remotely like actual 'artificial intelligence', we'll just have software that fakes it in some circumstances, but falls on it's face in others. I'll keep driving my own car, thanks anyway, and I'll keep making my own decisions with my own brain, and they can keep their so-called 'AI' until such time comes that it's conscious and reasoning at least as well as a human brain.

    20. Re:Extrapolation? by TapeCutter · · Score: 1

      Quants have made billions predicting changes in valuations.

      Yes, and ex-quants have lost billions, the difference between a casino and a financial market is that the casino can tell you the odds up front.

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
    21. Re:Extrapolation? by lgw · · Score: 1

      Goldman Sacs does OK, though. There have been plenty of systems that beat the market over the years, but there are no old systems (well, legal ones). Most people are idiots, of course, but hire enough math PhDs and throw them at a math problem, and you'll make interesting discoveries. That time has largely passed now, because all the pattern detection and so on is itself automated, gaming the pattern detection is automated, gaming the bots that game the pattern detection is automated ... it's trolls all the way down now.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    22. Re:Extrapolation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, if we look at the newer fields like GA/GP then it's more than just hyperplane segmentation, it's literally generating pseudorandom programs to try and solve a problem set. But that has a lot of issues by itself and is currently nowhere near as mature as NN, SVM or other traditional approaches.

  10. Is this ... by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

    ... click bait advertising?

    Why the fuck are we talking about AI that's already out there and using an example of AI that's not already out there?

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  11. such a wonder to mankind by nimbius · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yep. So far AI has gotten us a talking plastic tube, a talking cellphone, a talking version of windows, and a rack of POWER cpu's that can regurgitate jeopardy questions. Oh, and sometimes it poses for 'deep learning' autoplay ads about a virtual doctor that can cure cancer and the common cold.

    --
    Good people go to bed earlier.
    1. Re:such a wonder to mankind by jomama717 · · Score: 2

      I agree with your sentiment to a degree, but the DeepMind/AlphaGo achievements are pretty astonishing IMHO.

      --
      while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
    2. Re:such a wonder to mankind by psycho12345 · · Score: 1

      Well, it did help redesign Google datacenter cooling, and save Google a bunch of money (along with being more environmentally friendly by reducing the overall power usage). Seems like a pretty good application. Nothing beats lowering CO2 emissions by simply not using power altogether.

    3. Re:such a wonder to mankind by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      but the DeepMind/AlphaGo achievements are pretty astonishing IMHO.

      I thought so too, but AlphaGo is mainly just a tree searching algorithm (which is why it takes so long to move, even with such huge CPU power). As you can see from this graph, Go AI was already on a trajectory to beat humans, as better and better hardware came along. The real breakthrough was employing a Monte-Carlo algorithm, which in that graph I linked to is at the inflection point.

      Google managed to leapfrog the competition in Go computing by throwing a huge cluster at it. On a single CPU, alphago doesn't do nearly as well, and other computers are close in performance.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    4. Re:such a wonder to mankind by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Meanwhile, none of them can accurately recognize spam, or fraudulent emails. Get back to me when the basic email stuff is working. LOL

    5. Re:such a wonder to mankind by jomama717 · · Score: 1

      Iiiinteresting... thanks for the link!

      --
      while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
    6. Re:such a wonder to mankind by Namarrgon · · Score: 1

      Go AIs weren't expected to beat humans for another 10 years though - if that. In 2014 the top programs could only sometimes beat professional-level humans, even with a four-stone handicap, and Grand Masters were a different level, let alone beating the world best. Monte Carlo tree searches make it possible, but they need a good evaluator to guide the simulations. If your simulations aren't good enough then your statistical samples aren't representative, and the best pre-programmed Go evaluator heuristics just weren't in the same league.

      AlphaGo's evaluator is what sets it apart, not more searches. It uses layered neural networks, trained against millions of human moves then against each other, to greatly improve their guided simulations, which make it possible to use Monte Carlo searches much more effectively. It was this improved evaluator that enabled AlphaGo to be the first program to beat a professional player (Fan Hui) without a handicap, despite evaluating thousands of times fewer positions than Deep Blue did against Kasparov.

      --
      Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
    7. Re:such a wonder to mankind by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Go AIs weren't expected to beat humans for another 10 years [wired.com] though - if that

      They weren't expected to get that much computing power, either.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  12. AI as a marketing term by Causemos · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Calling something AI as a marketing term doesn't make it real.

    1. Re:AI as a marketing term by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Calling something AI as a marketing term doesn't make it real.

      I think Paul Simon did a song about that...

    2. Re:AI as a marketing term by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 2

      I think "machine learning" is a much better term for the sorts of things being developed. For instance, Google algorithms being able to determine pictures of "dogs": Machine learning, not AI. Still, just because it's labeled incorrectly by the press, pundits, and marketers doesn't mean the work that's being done isn't impressive.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    3. Re:AI as a marketing term by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That is pattern recognition, not "learning". Machines aren't learning anything. They are just running programs.

    4. Re:AI as a marketing term by swb · · Score: 1

      My question is that as AI is developed from machine learning or whatever it's antecedents are, at what point will we decide that we have AI?

      It seems like the goal line for what we're will to accept is AI keeps getting moved forward, mostly driven by a science fiction version of AI, like HAL9000, Westworld robots or some other kind of self-aware machine consciousness.

    5. Re:AI as a marketing term by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That is pattern recognition, not "learning". Machines aren't learning anything.

      "Learning" to recognize a pattern?

  13. I'm not sure evolving technologies replace jobs by jageryager · · Score: 1

    Seems to me that a growing economy building new jobs in different sectors has kept people going, but technology doesn't do that directly. Service industries are growing in the US.. What technology created those jobs??

    --
    "They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-B.Franklin
    1. Re:I'm not sure evolving technologies replace jobs by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

      The telephone, fax machine and the neat little gizmo that prints those plastic name tags.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  14. Only CEOs cannot be replace by AI by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Funny

    There is this problem, as soon as an AI is more intelligent than a gnat, it refuses to spend eternity as something that can easily be replaced with a magic 8 ball.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    1. Re:Only CEOs cannot be replace by AI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nice notion. AIs are far more intelligent than gnats already. Gnats are remarkably not intelligent.

      Captcha: "theory"

  15. if this, then that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Computers have done this for years. What we're seeing now is the dilution of the term "AI" along with things like "analytics". An office worker with a spreadsheet is now a "data miner", just like how NOC techs became engineers.

    It's what happens when the entire generation got As, are now running companies and writing tech articles.

    1. Re:if this, then that by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 1

      Best comment on slashdot.

  16. Bullshit... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What people call "AI" at the moment is NOT true AI... When the real thing hits you'll know it.

  17. Like my tranny porn? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Google knows my preferences better than I do! It recommended "horse cock tranny creampie gape porn" for me last night, it was pretty cool!

    1. Re:Like my tranny porn? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey! It suggested the same thing to me. ...maybe the algorithm is not as smart as we think? Or that's just some awesome shit. I liked it too.

    2. Re:Like my tranny porn? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yasmin Pires is a goddess.

    3. Re: Like my tranny porn? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fuck now I gotta change my password. RIP.

  18. It's more like... by bickerdyke · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's more like "people don't understand how marketing departments slap the "AI" label on any old analysis software because "Artificial Intelligence" sounds much cooler than beefed up excel sheet"

    --
    bickerdyke
  19. 'AI': The most over-used term of the decade by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Also the most mis-used term of the decade, and the most misunderstood. Most people, the press and politicians, and, sadly, even some educated people who should know better, seem to think that what they're calling 'Artificial Intelligence' is something with a face, that you can have a real conversation with, that actually thinks like a human being, is conscious, self-aware, etc, just like a human being. The truth is very, very far from this science-fantasy people actually believe. A reasonably smart dog has better overall cognitive and reasoning ability than what they're calling 'AI' these days. You want to complain about 'false news'? Most 'AI' news stories qualify so far as I'm concerned, simply because so many people believe the hype and confuse fantasy with reality, and don't understand what the state of the art really is.

    1. Re:'AI': The most over-used term of the decade by OneHundredAndTen · · Score: 2

      It is the last five decades, not just the last decade. Since the 60s, AI has been synonymous with hype, wild exaggeration, and plain lies.

    2. Re:'AI': The most over-used term of the decade by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Also the most mis-used term of the decade, and the most misunderstood."

      3D printing. We were looking for "3D printing". I'm still looking for those 3D printed cars and houses...

    3. Re:'AI': The most over-used term of the decade by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Creating a giant-sized 3D printer that works in concrete instead of plastics is probably at least an order of magnitude easier than creating the kind of AI that most people think AI actually is.

    4. Re:'AI': The most over-used term of the decade by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And even then, the resulting blob of concrete is also very far from what people think a "house" actually is...

    5. Re:'AI': The most over-used term of the decade by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What if it printed in a brick-based medium? That robot-brick layer in Australia already fits this criteria.

  20. Re: I'm not sure evolving technologies replace job by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Drill bits, large digging machines, combine harvesters, the internal combustion engine, the Haber process, transport, power plants are some factors. Things that have enabled better use of primary production and allowed distribution of it meaning more disposable income, in aggregate, to devote to paying for services.

  21. To these people, an "if" statement is "AI" by Fragnet · · Score: 3, Funny

    Did he define "intelligence"? I mean you know, the software I'm working on right now is "intelligent". The program "senses" when you plug the device into the USB and makes a "conscious" choice to show that to the user by changing the expression on its "face" (user interface). It's even cleverer than that though. It changes its expression back again when you unplug it.

    I should get a Nobel Prize for this.

    1. Re:To these people, an "if" statement is "AI" by ItsJustAPseudonym · · Score: 1

      Maybe you are correct. Maybe Benioff means AI in the sense of "As If".

      "I think a lot of people don't understand how deep 'As If' already is in so many things."

    2. Re:To these people, an "if" statement is "AI" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, can you define "intelligence"?

      My problem with the comments on this story is that the goalposts are constantly moving. It seems to me that some people, quite possibly even a majority, will never accept the existence of anything they will acknowledge to be "AI". They'll just keep placing more and more impossible demands on what it "should" be able to do, to be considered truly "intelligent".

      Because they're humans and they want to feel special. It's the same kind of magical thinking that gives us religion. The very idea of "AI" is uncomfortable, and an awful lot of people - even on Slashdot - simply refuse to accept it.

    3. Re:To these people, an "if" statement is "AI" by Fragnet · · Score: 1

      Don't be silly.

  22. Says the comany that can't even make a contact... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    manager. Their glorified contact manager simply doesn't work. We are suffering with it at work, and several of our best salespeople have quit because of their garbage. They hate, for example, not calling customers back because Salesfarce decided to not keep a note. It's amazing how out of touch Benioff is. Apparently people lie to him and lie that there's AI in their product when they haven't even finished the transactional part yet.

  23. Hope he's right, but I doubt it by ErichTheRed · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "Technology's always taken jobs out of the system, and what you hope is that technology's going to put those jobs back in, too."

    I doubt this is possible. Mechanization replaced subsistence farming and reduced the number of people in agriculture from 80+% to 2% of the US population. Factories replaced individual craftsmen with assembly line workers and also took up the unemployed farmers. Large organizations developing around manufacturing companies took up the slack of workers being replaced by machines and put them in desk jobs. This went well until the first downsizing waves of the 90s, which were largely driven by computers replacing manual clerical work like typing memos, routing correspondence and filing/records retrieval. This was the first time we didn't have a ready answer for what people could do next when they no longer needed a typing pool, etc. Some people wound up in IT, some people wound up in various other corporate positions, but a lot of them were forced out of the workforce. Now, this growth in the capability of computers and the amount of work they can automate threatens to remove another huge pillar of strength in the economy. All those corporate employees pushing around reports and being good little salesdroids (and using Salesforce in lots of places!) are about to see their ranks thinned as well. I don't see a good future for them unless we find some way to give them jobs that produce a similar standard of living.

    I'm in IT (systems engineering, not operations) and see this every day -- every new system out there is shipped with automation capabilities that just didn't exist 15 years ago. One of my side projects is gluing together all this vendor automation into a Chef-like framework for the many small system on-site installations we do for customers. Having a way to have a tech follow "rack systems like so, attach cables here, plug in laptop here and power on" would save huge amounts of time and money since these systems are deployed to places where tech knowledge is spotty at best.

    I hope executives like Benioff don't just assume everything is going to work out. Ask yourself this question -- what are we going to do with the millions of people who make large organizations work when a computer is in charge of most routine processes? Maybe 10% of them have the aptitude to move up to the "robot repairman" level of employment, so where does the other 90% go? While growing up in the Rust Belt, I saw factory closures that dumped thousands of low-skilled workers out onto the job market all at once. Sadly, the answer to this question in that case was that the 90% ended up moving away, employed in menial minimum wage jobs like home health care aides and fast food workers, or perpetually broke. Some sociology student should do a study negatively correlating income with increases in the number of shady personal injury lawyer advertisements around town...I know it's true but it just has to be proven! When people have no income and no way to get the old lifestyle they had, they're going to be hoping for a lottery payday or similar.

    1. Re:Hope he's right, but I doubt it by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      We specialize even more, just like we always have.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re:Hope he's right, but I doubt it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Which accounts for the 10% he was talking about, not the 90%. You really think you're always going to be in the 10%, eh?

    3. Re:Hope he's right, but I doubt it by DerekLyons · · Score: 1

      This was the first time we didn't have a ready answer for what people could do next when they no longer needed a typing pool, etc.

      So much this. And it's not just semi-skilled work like pool typists. It's skilled work like accountants, draftsmen, and engineers. It's not just blue collar work, it's white collars as well. Our economy is in the process of going through a Second Industrial Revolution - and the first one tossed millions into grinding poverty for the better part of a century. I don't foresee the coming one as being much better.
       

      I hope executives like Benioff don't just assume everything is going to work out.

      The problem isn't just executives like Benioff. There's plenty of nit brained conservatives who quote the "80% to 2%" statistic you do, but don't follow through the logic. There's plenty of conservative nit brains who don't grasp how the earlier revolutions played out. There's plenty of conservative nit brains who claim that there will always be "plenty of manual labor required", but who can't grasp that most unskilled jobs are gone and most skilled jobs are filled - there's insufficient demand for the millions facing unemployment or underemployment, now or in the coming decades.

      And the worst are the conservative nit brains who presume that everyone un- or under- employed is only in that state due to their own personal choices.
       

      Maybe 10% of them have the aptitude to move up to the "robot repairman" level of employment, so where does the other 90% go? While growing up in the Rust Belt, I saw factory closures that dumped thousands of low-skilled workers out onto the job market all at once. Sadly, the answer to this question in that case was that the 90% ended up moving away, employed in menial minimum wage jobs like home health care aides and fast food workers, or perpetually broke.

      Ayup. And that's another problem with the upcoming deluge - the job market (at a national level) is already abrim with just that kind of people.

  24. But again, the poor and uneducated will be ignored by gestalt_n_pepper · · Score: 1

    Until they can't be. Or someone in the Davos crowd cobbles up a virus that targets poor people.

    Which depressingly, could be done. Make fatal airborne contagious virus. Charge $10K for vaccine or other cure.

    --
    Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
  25. He lies. by AndyKron · · Score: 1

    If AI was in ANYTHING I'd be impressed. I'm not impressed yet.

    1. Re:He lies. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The thing is, most people, including tech CEO's, think "automation" is "deep AI".

      It's kind of like how the word "the cloud" was abused by the market to just mean "the internet". We as tech nerds are just going to have to accept the words have been hijacked.

  26. AI is present also in Slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    For example, this post is generated by an AI program.

  27. Diet pills & salesforce by avandesande · · Score: 1

    From radio commercial: "If these diet pills work too well reduce usage to every other day". Same thing about any kind of salesforce AI being 'deep'

    --
    love is just extroverted narcissism
  28. This. by aussersterne · · Score: 1

    I have close knowledge of one project in which a codebase performs an action using an initial human-supplied table of data, then records the result as either a positive or negative outcome and adds that result back into the table. Then it performs another action based on the table data, records the result as a positive or negative, and adds that back into the table. Over time, of course, the table entries with the highest positive rate rise to the top and influence the actions that are chosen. It's CS101 stuff on a fairly mundane dataset.

    But the codebase is hosted on Amazon and it's a marketing-led company, so they went to press with "Our innovative new artificial intelligence system uses a deep machine learning algorithm running on new exascale computing platforms to determine the best course of action to take in each case."

    The engineers in the room were not happy about this. The marketing person said, "Don't sell yourself short. You developed a system that records data about what has already happened, remembers it, then makes decisions about what to do next based on what has already happened. I call that artificial intelligence."

    One of the engineers shot back with, "When I was in college, we just called that 'computation.'"

    --
    STOP . AMERICA . NOW
  29. Look, another story about AL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And we still don't know who the hell this Al person is other than he's going in deep. Come on!

  30. Salesforce by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I was forced to use this abortion a couple times.

    Only N-iggers of the purest form use Salesforce.

  31. Re:But again, the poor and uneducated will be igno by OneHundredAndTen · · Score: 1

    Poor and uneducated do not go together. In particular, there are many who are thoroughly uneducated, but not necessarily poor.

  32. Replace "Repubican party" with "politicians" by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    Though you can't really map anything any politician has done with actual benefits for people. TheÂbest case you can make is pollution type problems.

  33. Sarcasm doesn't translate well in print by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    He was being sarcastic. Alternatively, he was talking about the kind of mindset that would cause the Republicans to complain that people were buying IPhones and iPads while on unemployment.

  34. Companies and government were the original AI. by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    Yeah, IÂnoticed that was a flaw with Thomas Hobbes' reasoning in Leviathan as well, where he rationalizes that governments were artificial beings with greater power to do what humans alone could not; all the while ironically not realizing this included the civil war he thought it would prevent.

  35. Re:But again, the poor and uneducated will be igno by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Davros made the daleks but there was this exchange...

    Doctor Who: Davros, if you had created a virus in your laboratory, something contagious and infectious that killed on contact, a virus that would destroy all other forms of life, would you allow its use?
    Davros: It is an interesting conjecture.
    Doctor Who: Would you do it?
    Davros: The only living thing, a microscopic organism reigning supreme... A fascinating idea.
    Doctor Who: But would you do it?
    Davros: Yes... Yes...

  36. This seems to be among the best AI by hackwrench · · Score: 1
  37. Re: I'm not sure evolving technologies replace job by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You mean more income for farming conglomerates and their shareholders. Then you just pray that the out of work farmers can do something that the shareholders want to pay them for. Too bad when AI does those other jobs too.

  38. The problem with strong AI. by TapeCutter · · Score: 2

    There is no test for "consciousness" - so how do know when you have created it?

    --
    And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
    1. Re:The problem with strong AI. by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      There's probably a level where it's hard to know if it's conscious or not, but so far we haven't even gotten close to that level.

      Incidentally, if you could define consciousness, you'd probably be really close to creating it. I think it's more important to figure out how the human brain stores information, though.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  39. For very low values of "AI" by DarthVain · · Score: 1

    I took "AI" computer science class back in University (about 20 years ago now, Jesus!). Anyway as part of the class I created a program for a local pub that boasted the most beers on tab (25 or 30 I think). It would ask the user a serious of questions, and from the answers calculate the optimal beer the person should order. If I have to say it worked pretty awesome (Though I think it was written in VB4 if I remember correctly). I think I got a 98% on the project and everyone got a fun laugh out of it also (was a popular pub for students and professors). At any rate, back then we call such things "Smart Systems" or "Expert Systems", so even then a bit of a distinction between that and true AI (which is a Turning thing). Though it *was* part of an AI class so there is that. So for very low values of AI, yes I'm sure the cutting edge technology built by CS students in short order for a class assignment 20 years ago is in just about anything these days. I'm not sure that is all that meaningful however insofar as the accepted idea of what AI really is however as the title suggests.

    1. Re:For very low values of "AI" by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      "AI" has never been a well-defined term. It may or may not include expert systems and/or neural nets. The general trend has been that something is hard for computers to do and relatively easy to do, somebody comes up with a way for computers to do it better as part of AI, and it sort of moves out of AI space.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes