4 ms·
I think we're overestimating AI. The hype has been around in tech circles now for years, but now it's breached it's walls and is spilling out into mainstream di
by Fricken 10y ago
I think we're overestimating AI. The hype has been around in tech circles now for years, but now it's breached it's walls and is spilling out into mainstream discussions in economics and politics, and it's getting even more detached from reality.
And yet, I don't know of an instance where all this newfangled machine learning has been disruptive. The expert systems that will supposedly displace accountants and paralegals don't exist. Dextrous robots can barely screw the lid on a bottle, and only under controlled conditions. Autonomous vehicles reliable enough to be applied commercially don't exist. None of it exists. There's no garauntee it will.
The AI race is most definitely on, but nobody knows where the finish line is. And there's a long history of inventors grossly misunderguesstimating the location of finish lines, particularly in the field of AI, where every time we find a new piece of the puzzle we think 'This is it. This is the holy grail!'
Machines are better at pattern recognition, that's the big breakthrough, but there's so much more to taking humans out of the loop than just that.
- fourthark 10y agoYep, maybe not the fun kind, but lawyering and accounting take creativity. We have seen zero evidence of machine creativity.
- falcor84 10y agoThere are tons of examples of machine creativity. The highest profile one from the past year is probably AlphaGo's famous move 37.
- mdpopescu 10y agoHere's one company that would disagree. http://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/special-reports/2016/09/clio-cloud-2016-artificial-intelligence-law/ http://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/special-reports/2016/09...
- stale2002 10y agoWhat? Autonomous vehicles are already deployed in the 10s of thousands on the road. You can buy one right now. Tesla sells them. Sure, you can say that these are not "full" self driving cars. But they are part of the way there and they are already being disruptive. Imagine if the Tesla self driving cars got a bit better, and how many accidents they could prevent (they are already stopping accidents). You don't need perfect AI to disrupt industries.
- Fricken 10y agoPartial autonomy isn't disruptive, you may want to look up what that word means in the economic sense. It isn't going to turn the logistics of transportation on it's head, or put anybody out of work, or cripple the marketshare of big carmakers. It's just a feature.
- stale2002 10y agoSure it is! Imagine if partial autonomy safety features get deployed world wide, cutting car accidents by half or more. Hello car insurance disruption!! Even simple simple stuff like the automatic braking safety features that are just getting deployed, have the potential to save hundreds of thousands of lives every year. "seat belts" and "airbags" were also massively disruptive, and this new stuff has the potential to be even more so.
- Fricken 10y agoAt what point did seatbelts and airbags displace established competitors? Was there a car company I don't know about that went bellyup because they couldn't figure out how to seatbelt?