Artificial Intelligence Isn’t as Autonomous Nor Intelligent as You Might Think

There are few technologies more misunderstood and consequential than artificial intelligence. If you ask me, the myths we tell about them are partly to blame for the confusion.

Often these stories depict the AI as having god-like superintelligence — far beyond what we mere mortals can comprehend. HAL 9000, for instance, is so intelligent that we’re told the mission to Jupiter in 2001: A Space Odyssey could not function without him. HAL is a personified artificial entity. His intelligence appears human-like: creative, inventive, full of intent. The lives of the astronauts aboard his vessel are totally under his control, and he will follow his programming to carry out his mission no matter what — even if it means killing the people on board.

But the AI we have today isn’t nearly as complex or intelligent as that. Not even by a long shot. Yet, much of the popular discourse around it makes it seem like it is. Top figures in Science and Technology, from the late Stephen Hawking, to Ray Kurzweil, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk feed this mythos with their alternately utopian and apocalyptic rhetoric. But, you see, fictional AI’s like HAL 9000, Data from Star Trek, C3PO from Star Wars or Eva from Ex Machina are just that — fiction. They are what we call General AI’s. These AI’s, as depicted…