A pragmatic look on the Artificial Intelligence hype

Laurent Haug
Jul 24, 2017 · 2 min read

People who build AIs are trying to downplay the hype. People who don’t build AIs say robots are coming for our jobs in the next five years. As usual everybody will listen to whoever reinforces they preconceived view of the world, but I have a feeling the AI experts are the ones anchored in reality.

Despite all the hype I haven’t seen one truly intelligent system able to support me effectively. I stopped using “intelligent” PAs (just couldn’t get the subtleties of something as simple as time zones), Alexa can’t deal with foreign words (I will send a bottle of Champagne to whoever can launch “Supplique pour être enterré à la plage de Sète” by George’s Brassens on Prime Music), SIRI can’t recognize my wife’s name with 100% accuracy, Google Inbox’s automated responses are useful 1% of the time — when the answer is something like “Ok, thank you” — and I’ve lost more time than I’ve saved reading through suggestions I ended up rejecting. Automated systems have “optimized” a few things here and there, but I have zero proof they actually did the best possible job as they are black boxes.

A while ago I spoke to a scientist whose company announced it would use AI and big data to rid the world of a major health issue in the coming years, and that person was horrified by a claim that had been made by someone from the business who had absolutely zero clue about what had to concretely happen for that promise to be fulfilled. This is where I see AI these days, overhyped by the business folks who see it as an easy way to put money in the bank, while the geeks start to realize they won’t possibly be able to live up to the promises that are being made in their name.

Laurent Haug

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I help people find ideas and ideas find people. http://ch.linkedin.com/in/laurenthaug and hello at laurenthaug dot com.

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