The term "artificial intelligence" has lost all meaning

Often this is just the fashionable name of a computer program.

In science fiction, the possibility of a threat from artificial intelligence (AI) is related to the relationship between people and intelligent machines. Whether it’s the Terminators, the Cylons, or assistive machines such as the Star Trek computer or the Star Wars droids, machines are deservedly called artificial intelligence when they become intelligent - or at least they realize themselves enough to act masterfully, unexpectedly and on their own.

What can be said about the current explosion of "allegedly AI" in the media, industry and technology? In some cases, to call something “AI” is possible in principle, albeit with a stretch. Robomobils do not compare with R2D2 (or Hal 9000 ), but they have a set of sensors, data and computational capabilities to perform the difficult task of driving a car. In most cases, systems declared as AIs are not aware of themselves, are not intelligent, do not have the will, and cannot surprise. These are just programs.

Examples of illegal use of the term "AI" can be found anywhere. Google is sponsoring a system that defines inappropriate comments — a Perspective machine learning algorithm. But it turns out that it can be fooled by simple typos . The AI ​​must strengthen the US border , but in actual fact it turns out to be just a network of sensors and automatons with dubious possibilities for compiling a human profile. Similarly, the " AI for tennis " is just an improved sensor that uses commercially available computer vision. Facebook talks about the development of AI, which is able to determine suicidal moods by the posted records, but if you look closely, this turns out to be nothing more than a filter with tracking words and sequences that marks posts for later review by people.
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The wonders of AI are not only praised in the technical sector. Coca-Cola is going to use AI bots to “quickly collect promotional materials on the knee” - whatever that means. Similar attempts to make AI create music or write news at first glance looked promising - but AI bots who tried to correct typos and links on Wikipedia were stuck in endless cycles . According to the consulting firm Botanalytics, dealing with the issues of interaction between people and bots (no, really!), 40% of the interlocutors stop trying to communicate with bots after the first time. Maybe this is because bots are just ordinary “ press X to find out Y ” systems in a fashionable package, or Mad Libs cleverly automated game [board game with words missing in the text, where to insert random words and then read it out loud, scared of absurdity - approx. trans.].

AI is when computers act like in the movies.

AI has become a fashionable topic for corporate strategies. Economist at Bloomberg Intelligence, Michael McDonough, tracks the reference to “AI” in transcriptions of public discussions of the financial results of companies' earnings calls, and notes a big surge in the number of references in the last couple of years. Companies boast non-named AI purchases. The Global Human Capital Trends report from Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited [international network of consulting and auditing companies - approx. transl.] 2017 claims that the AI ​​has already made a "revolution" in the life and mentality of people - but without specifying specificity. However, the report concludes that AI forces corporate leaders to "rethink some of their main structures."

In the media and in communication, the simplest possibilities sometimes swell to the wonders of AI. Last month, Twitter announced an update that helps protect users from base and offensive tweets. The whole update boils down to a simple update of the system, hiding the records from blocked, muted or new accounts, as well as adding some unlisted content filters. Still, such changes, which are not much more complicated than additional conditions in database queries, are described as "the company's constant work on making AI smarter."

I asked my colleague from Georgia Tech, Charles Izbel, an AI researcher, to comment on the meaning of the term "AI." He immediately replied: "This is when computers act like in the movies." It sounds frivolous, but it underlines the inherent AI connection with the theories of cognitivism and reason. Lieutenant Commander Data raises questions about what features and capabilities make the creature sensible and morally - just like robomobili . Content filter hiding social network entries made from user accounts without avatars? It is not that. This is just software.

Izbel believes that the system can be called an AI, if it has at least two features. First, it must be trained in response to environmental changes. Fictional robots and cyborgs do it imperceptibly, thanks to the magic of abstraction of the story. But even the simplest machine learning system, such as Netflix’s Dynamic Optimizer , which seeks to improve the quality of compressed video, takes data from human viewers and uses it to train the algorithm, which then makes choices related to the next video programs.

The second sign of a true AI: what it learns should be interesting enough to make it difficult for people to learn. It shares AI and simple computer automation. A robot that replaces people-workers on assembling cars is not an AI, but simply a machine programmed to automatically repeat work. For Izbel, a machine or computer with a true AI would demonstrate self-control, behave unexpectedly and unconventionally.

AI can remind creators and users that today's computer systems are not something special.

The nagging about the unrealized achievements of AI may seem unimportant to you. If the segment of machines equipped with sensors and backed up by data will grow, it may be useful for people to track the evolution of these technologies. But experience suggests that computational advances must be treated with suspicion. I have already said that the word "algorithm" has become a cultural fetish, a worldly, technical equivalent of the divine. Indiscriminate use of the term is common, not without flaws, software in the form of a false idol . With AI the same story. As the author of the bots writes, Alison Parish, “when someone talks about AI, he means a computer program written by someone.”

In a MIT Technology Review blog from Stanford computer science expert Jerry Kaplan, he writes something similar : "AI is a tale made in haste of incompatible tools and technologies." Experts on AI, apparently, agree with him , calling this area "fragmented and for the most part uncontrollable." In connection with the illogical use of the term AI, Kaplan proposes to replace it with “anthropic calculations” - these are programs that should behave like people or interact with them. From his point of view, the mythical essence of AI, including the heritage that came from narratives, film and television, makes this term a horror story that you want to get rid of, and not the future you want to hope for.

Kaplan echoes not the last people. When mathematician Alan Turing accidentally came up with the idea of ​​machine intelligence almost 70 years ago, he assumed that machines would become smart when they could pretend to be people and thus deceive real people. In the 1950s, this idea did not seem real. And although Turing’s mental test was not limited to computers, then machines capable of performing relatively simple calculations still occupied whole rooms .

Today, cars are constantly deceiving people. Not necessarily pretending to be people, but convincing the latter that they are quite good alternatives to other tools. Twitter, Facebook, and Google are not improved versions of city halls, neighborhood gathering centers, libraries, or newspapers — these are other computer-controlled businesses with advantages and disadvantages. The consequences of these and other services need to be assessed in terms of the fact that they are just certain software implementations within corporations, and not totems of otherworldly AI.

In this sense, Kaplan may be right: the rejection of the term may be the best way to expel his devilish influence on modern culture. But the more traditional approach of Izbel - that the AI ​​- these are machines, students, and acting according to the studied - also has its advantages. Defending its exalted status in the tradition of science fiction, AI can remind creators and users of the simple truth: today's computer systems do not represent something special. These are just tools, made by people, carrying out programs, made by people, possessing properties and shortcomings of both.