I decided to blog about this after seeing a BBC article on “Is
AI more than just a buzzword?” AI is a term that is thrown around the Tech
industry like its nothing. I believe it has got to the point that every company
tries to coin themselves as an AI devoted company, it has led to a
misunderstanding of the definition of AI in itself. Is AI big data? Is AI statistical
analysis? Is AI Data Science? Some could say it is all these things however I
do believe as AI is now being used as a fancy marketing term the hype over AI
has been somewhat exaggerated.
You can check this BBC Blog here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-45219902
The latest to speak out Zia Chishti described AI as “there's
nothing here that's tremendously groundbreaking.” Zia Chishti is a computer
scientist who has been working in the field of AI for over 40 years and is CEO
of Afinti. His opinion is that there has been developments in computing
capacity but there has been little to suggest anything is groundbreaking. He
also describes Google DeepMind's defeat of a world champion player of the
ancient Chinese game of Go as being able to construct AI in a narrow domain which
has led to this “AI success”. This serves as great marketing news Google can give
to the press which develops this craze and adds to the narrative of this
mysterious technology which could become smarter than humans. Something which
he also states that adds to this hype is the “terrifying tweets of Elon Musk” which
I would agree with. In my opinion his tweets provide false optimism and hope
but are often quoted biblically as spoken word in the Tech industry.
From my research to try get behind the cloud of mist surrounding
AI. I have looked at some of the recent developments in 2018 AI has provided.
For example Alexa’s speech recognition is probably one of the best developments
of AI in recent times. Speech recognition continues to develop but currently at
best AI is being used to help and support human lives rather change lives that
the hype would make you believe. Similar with biometrics such products like
Apple facial recognition technology. Again it provides some functionality and use
but its not groundbreaking. AI is not close to understanding feelings or consciousness
which I would describe as groundbreaking.
One other big development I have seen through social media
is the Boston Dynamics dog “SpotMini”. However after doing some research I was
wondering what is the point? Boston Dynamics describe it as “The SpotMini robot
is one that was motivated by thinking about what could go in an office — in a
space more accessible for business applications — and then, the home
eventually,”. Dale Thomas a robotic researcher states “I have been a robotics
researcher, and one of the biggest problems I see is when so many laypeople
say “yeah, but what’s it for?” Don’t
get me wrong, I totally understand and appreciate the question, especially when
you see taxpayer’s money going towards it, but the true answer is, “it is for the advancement of human
knowledge that will hopefully help to inspire untold spinoff applications in
the future.” It’s an annoyingly vague, unsatisfying answer, but it is an
honest one.” Which would align with my point is that there is very little
practical use or development which can change the way in which we live.
To conclude I don’t want to be particularly negative about
an exciting prospect of Tech industry. However it does get frustrating hearing
laypersons speak about how AI is taking over the world and computers are
smarter than humans. I think an aspect of realism needs to be introduced that in
fact we aren’t at a point or close to groundbreaking technology. The technology
will only develop as fast as the computational resources that are available to
us. As well as this I think AI is being used as a marketing buzzword to create
this drama and hype over the technology.
Another great podcast on the topic is made available here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cswnlm
Follow @EdwardMuldrew
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