Such honesty
“Supervised machine learning doesn’t live up to the hype,” he declared. “It isn’t actual artificial intelligence akin to C-3PO, it’s a sophisticated pattern-matching tool.”
We have not advanced much, if at all, since 1980s "Expert Systems". I argued in the 1970s that if we knew how to do it we would simply have slow AI, if it was a question of needing more computing power. We have very much more CPU speed, RAM, storage and the Internet now. Still rubbish translation (hint it uses pattern matching and known "Rosetta translations", not real grammar and parsing as envisaged in the 1960s and 1970s). Hardly better spelling and grammar checkers than 35 years ago. Image Recognition that is really easily fooled pattern matching using big curated databases.
AI is more about hype and marketing than research or real products. A few big "tech" companies that didn't exist in the Mainframe era are more interested in selling overpriced gadgets or stealing usage data to help sell adverts. Not doing real AI research.
I learnt programming because I wanted to help develop AI. I think I read too much SF in the 1960s and 1970s. Modern SF with AI now seems very self-indulgent, egotistical and pointless. We are still no closer to defining what natural intelligence is, or why we have language but the smartest animals only seem to have vocabularies. Nor why it seems there is little correlation between brain size and tool using / problem solving / vocabulary in animals (compare corvids, dogs, horses, goats, dolphins, chimps, whales). There is none in humans.
Note IQ tests and Psychometric tests only compare people with the same background and training. Not at all intelligence, though we don't quite know what intelligence is. It's not purely about language, though that's important. A vocabulary IS NOT language. One is simply recall and matching and the other is still a bit mysterious.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
