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What you say seems undeniably true, however reifying fundamental concepts lies at or near the core of human natural intelligence. Perhaps more so than logic its

What you say seems undeniably true, however reifying fundamental concepts lies at or near the core of human natural intelligence. Perhaps more so than logic itself. Work on AI is basically as old as computing itself (i.e. the pioneers of computing explored from early on connectionist models of computing, neural networks, cellular automata, reinforcement learning, LISP, etc). AI has been evolving for eight decades, vast resources have been channeled into it; and frankly, the successes are striking. It would be almost impossible for us not to conceive of AI as a “thing.”

dr_dshiv 5y ago
It’s not so hard. Just a few years ago, say 2012, it was really unusual for academics in the field of AI to refer to any system as “AI” or “having AI” or “being an AI state.” Why? Because it was disingenuous. But then when IBM Watson was released, the dump trucks of money started showing up, and the self-policing stopped. Look, I’m not critiquing the field of AI or funding it. Referring to AI research is no problem. My problem comes from naming the outputs of the field “AI.” Because we all know it is a moving target, it doesn’t really mean anything and it confuses non-experts to the point that they make poor decisions.
- mdp2021 5y ago
  The term is 'decision support systems'. But modern decision support systems may make use of AI (of the results of research under he umbrella of AI - in short, "AI". It is not necessary to have the bunny quotes of figurative speech everywhere, they should be understood even when inexplicit but clear). And AI in DSS increases the underlying problems.
- dougabug 5y ago
  Sure, but in 2012, AI wasn’t a common subject for laypeople to discuss as non-fiction. Policy makers for decades mostly dismissed AI because of earlier failures to live up to the hype. In 2012, most people didn’t have smartphones in their pocket with “AI processors” capable of 10-30 trillion operations per second. Face, voice, and object recognition, real-time language translation etc weren’t ubiquitous and taken for granted. As AI becomes increasingly a realistic part of every day life, it necessarily invades language. Historically even words for colors took centuries to enter into common usage in most cultures. If AI researchers were to stop referring to AI as a whole, and individual AI technologies as “a thing,” it wouldn’t change how the rest of the population talks about AI. When I entered the field, my mentor said that the first thing to know was that, “Nothing works.” For years, branding something as AI was an invitation to not get funded. I doubt the restraint around the use of the term was entirely altuistic. AI skeptics notwithstanding, the train has left the station and the changing public discourse reflects that reality.
  - dr_dshiv 5y ago
    > As AI becomes increasingly a realistic part of every day life, it necessarily invades language. Like search, recommendation, autopilot, navigation, translation, NPC, deepfake… referring to any of these as “the AI” does no one any favors. All are tools. Check this out: https://nooscope.ai/ https://nooscope.ai/

dr_dshiv 5y ago

It’s not so hard. Just a few years ago, say 2012, it was really unusual for academics in the field of AI to refer to any system as “AI” or “having AI” or “being an AI state.” Why? Because it was disingenuous. But then when IBM Watson was released, the dump trucks of money started showing up, and the self-policing stopped. Look, I’m not critiquing the field of AI or funding it. Referring to AI research is no problem. My problem comes from naming the outputs of the field “AI.” Because we all know it is a moving target, it doesn’t really mean anything and it confuses non-experts to the point that they make poor decisions.

mdp2021 5y ago
The term is 'decision support systems'. But modern decision support systems may make use of AI (of the results of research under he umbrella of AI - in short, "AI". It is not necessary to have the bunny quotes of figurative speech everywhere, they should be understood even when inexplicit but clear). And AI in DSS increases the underlying problems.
dougabug 5y ago
Sure, but in 2012, AI wasn’t a common subject for laypeople to discuss as non-fiction. Policy makers for decades mostly dismissed AI because of earlier failures to live up to the hype. In 2012, most people didn’t have smartphones in their pocket with “AI processors” capable of 10-30 trillion operations per second. Face, voice, and object recognition, real-time language translation etc weren’t ubiquitous and taken for granted. As AI becomes increasingly a realistic part of every day life, it necessarily invades language. Historically even words for colors took centuries to enter into common usage in most cultures. If AI researchers were to stop referring to AI as a whole, and individual AI technologies as “a thing,” it wouldn’t change how the rest of the population talks about AI. When I entered the field, my mentor said that the first thing to know was that, “Nothing works.” For years, branding something as AI was an invitation to not get funded. I doubt the restraint around the use of the term was entirely altuistic. AI skeptics notwithstanding, the train has left the station and the changing public discourse reflects that reality.
- dr_dshiv 5y ago
  > As AI becomes increasingly a realistic part of every day life, it necessarily invades language. Like search, recommendation, autopilot, navigation, translation, NPC, deepfake… referring to any of these as “the AI” does no one any favors. All are tools. Check this out: https://nooscope.ai/ https://nooscope.ai/