I think “actively engaged” here means “curated”, where a human had to provide labels or guidance. Obviously the rise of big data and deep models that can induc

I think “actively engaged” here means “curated”, where a human had to provide labels or guidance. Obviously the rise of big data and deep models that can induce probabilities is the source of pretty much all advancement in AI since heavy reliance on curation and logic were abandoned. As such, AI really is as much a technology now as it has ever been. It seems that the central revelation in the field since the demise of symbolic AI (aka GOFAI) has been that so much useful pattern matching can be achieved by 1) the inducing of sufficient probability from large data to enable high levels of (narrow) intelligent behavior and 2) doing it using so little human curation. Perhaps the author is suggesting that recent advances in AI are not really based in intelligence or cognition, and thus is only a trivially small subset of the greater endeavor of building machines that can think. If so, then the misnomer she objects to isn't “AI”, it's “intelligence”.