When machine learning was a buzz word then companies started using it to describe almost everything they do. Recently I have also noticed that more companies (

When machine learning was a buzz word then companies started using it to describe almost everything they do. Recently I have also noticed that more companies (and PMs) are using AI in its place, at least in their marketing speak. Often the AI or machine learning that is being sold to their customers (or if it’s a startup, to their investors) is in fact a team or a group of teams creating static rules. If it is image recognition the they will often have a large team of manual reviewers. Yes there maybe some AI or machine learning models that are assisting in the decision making, but they are usually much less effective than people realize. Today whenever I hear AI or machine learning, my default is to assume it is marketing speak. I don’t doubt there are models, I just doubt their effectiveness. But saying “we use AI to do X”, sounds much better than saying, “we have a team of experts who help us do X really well” With that said I have worked and continue to work with some amazing data scientist who really are pushing the limits of what can be done with machine learning.