What is AI, really?
AI is slowly trickling into the mainstream in the form of Chatbots, Home Automation devices, and the Google DeepMind Project that constantly sees pictures of dicks (WARNING!, NSFW, but TOTALLY worth it and I’ll probably devote a whole article to it later).
But out of those three examples above, only one is what I would truly consider even close to AI.
Both Chatbots and home assistants are explicitly programmed; meaning they can’t do anything they weren’t programmed to do. There’s very little surprises when you ask them to do something they can’t; they just don’t work. While Google is using Google Home to take voice samples from you to improve it’s voice-recognition algorithms and shape more of your online profile (you know, the one that has never, ever, searched for porn), the device itself isn’t going to change overnight and you’re not going to get any surprises that aren’t added manually.
However, the DeepMind Project is pretty close to AI. It’s done by something called Deep Learning or Artificial Neural Networks. This explicitly falls under Machine Learning. Effectively, it’s a Computer simulation of a Neuron augmented with some Math. Also, lots of data. And then going over that data several thousand to a million times, which is a short list of what computers are really good at.
The problem is AI is a generic concept, like consciousness itself. We kind of have an understanding of what it looks like, but don’t really know what it is. This isn’t a new problem and somewhat responsible for the ebb and flows in the excitement and pursuit of AI, resulting what is known as AI Winter. AI gets over-hyped and then it fails to deliver. It causes booms and busts, similar to economic bubbles breaking. We quickly might hit the ceiling of AI enthusiasm (we’re also a little overdue). Yes, there’s still progress to be made, but Chatbots aren’t anything new; they are more coupling old ideas with social media.
More than likely, Machine Intelligence is going to be fundamentally different than anything we’ve seen before. While it will probably be able to imitate what we call consciousness, true AI will sneak up on us.
In the meantime, accept these new techs for the benefit they actually provide and not what they could be doing. While Chatbots are a good tool for Customer Service, it’s not going to benefit anyone with actual problems. You’ll still have to end up talking to a human in order to get a major problem resolved.
So, sorry, but you’ll still have to be online for three hours with Comcast Support to solve your problem.
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