Are Companies Overhyping AI? (hackaday.com)

When it comes to artificial intelligence, "companies have been overselling the concept and otherwise normal people are taking the bait," writes Hackaday: Not to pick on Amazon, but all of the home assistants like Alexa and Google Now tout themselves as AI. By the most classic definition, that's true. AI techniques include matching natural language to predefined templates. That's really all these devices are doing today. Granted the neural nets that allow for great speech recognition and reproduction are impressive. But they aren't true intelligence nor are they even necessarily direct analogs of a human brain... The danger is that people are now getting spun up that the robot revolution is right around the corner...

[N]othing in the state of the art of AI today is going to wake up and decide to kill the human masters. Despite appearances, the computers are not thinking. You might argue that neural networks could become big enough to emulate a brain. Maybe, but keep in mind that the brain has about 100 billion neurons and almost 10 to the 15th power interconnections. Worse still, there isn't a clear consensus that the neural net made up of the cells in your brain is actually what is responsible for conscious thought. There's some thought that the neurons are just control systems and the real thinking happens in a biological quantum computer... Besides, it seems to me if you build an electronic brain that works like a human brain, it is going to have all the problems a human brain has (years of teaching, distraction, mental illness, and a propensity for error).
Citing the dire predictions of Elon Musk and Bill Gates, the article argues that "We are a relatively small group of people who have a disproportionate influence on what our friends, families, and co-workers think... We need to spread some sense into the conversation."

Comments

Please read before making Betteridge's Law posts

[Anonymous Coward]

This has nothing to do with Betteridge's Law. If that applied to any question, the answer to any Ask Slashdot question would also be no. That's absurd. This headline is asking your opinion of whether companies are overhyping AI. Betteridge's Law does not apply here.

Ian Betteridge observed that sometimes journalists who hadn't adequately researched a story and couldn't confirm the story would still run with it. To avoid printing false statements, journalists would write their headlines as questions about the facts. The classic example was "Did Last.fm Just Hand Over User Listening Data To the RIAA?" where the headline is asking a question about the facts. The headline insinuates that the answer is yes, without directly saying so. The journalist doesn't have the evidence to be confident it happened but ran with the story anyway. It's poor journalism and basically a form of clickbait. That's where Betteridge's Law applies, where the question can be answered with 'no' instead of assuming that the answer should be yes. It's observing that the journalist isn't confident about what the facts are, so the reader shouldn't be, either. Betteridge's Law is a criticism of reporting unsubstantiated stories.

The headline here isn't asking a question about the facts. Instead, it's asking a question of opinion, specifically whether businesses are overhyping AI. Betteridge's Law does not apply here. It does not apply in situations such as this story.

If you're going to mention Betteridge's Law, please understand what it actually means. It doesn't apply to this headline or story. The headline is a question to solicit your opinions and encourage discussion.

Re:Not self aware inhuman AI, but cyborgs

[jellomizer]

Exactly, often at work I may implement some basic learning, adaptive algorithms. To help solve problems where there isn't a 1 for 1 answer. The code is good enough to outperform people in terms of numbers on these tasks, as it is able to handle a large number of items without exhaustion or cutting corners. However the toughest part is trying to explain to the people who will need to be responsible for the data, that it isn't perfect, so just don't go blindly accepting all the results, or go into a panic just because there is a non 0 error rate.
Because the data I work with isn't perfect, assumptions based off of trending needs to be made, statistical models have a degree of error. The human brain which is one of the biggest statistical engines also has a high degree of error too, and can be tricked with unexpected inputs. Hence why magicians can perform their tricks.
But for the less than technical people, there is the idea that the computer is somehow smarter then us. It isn't it is just better doing what it is told, and doesn't take shortcuts in exhaustion. A Program will run until it is complete, even if it kills the hardware while doing it (overheating, draining batteries etc....) A human when getting stressed will take short cuts, stop working on problems, make crazy assumptions just to keep the body functioning.