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> AI is a feature, not a product Part of the reason for this is that very often the best applications of AI are really invisible to the user, making everything

> AI is a feature, not a product Part of the reason for this is that very often the best applications of AI are really invisible to the user, making everything a little bit better, quietly behind the scenes. The same is true for software in general. The best software products automate loads of stuff behind the scenes so from the user perspective they just click a button and the thing they want to happen, happens. Perhaps the most successful and important AI product is a great example of this: the spam filter. I bet most younger email users don't even realize how much value this old AI tool provides them unseen. But the trouble is making effective AI products is not "sexy" right now, and if your team ships one it won't get any credit in a big company. I've had my PM instantly shoot down plenty of interesting applications of AI that wouldn't be very visible to the customer or larger product-org.

Dalewyn 4y ago
I don't fundamentally disagree, but if spam filters are "AI" then my bloody toaster is also artificially intelligent.
- time_to_smile 4y ago
  You must have a smarter toaster than I do. My toaster is a completely deterministic mechanism that knows nothing about my past toasting experience, nor makes any inference about future toast. A spam filter: - Is provided historic information about the problem - Learns from this information to construct a basic model of language - Is then provided unseen information - Then makes a probabilistic decision based on a degree of uncertainty. The exact model behind the spam filtering can be extremely simple (naive Bayes) but could easily (and probably will without you even realizing it) expand to include things like GPT. A spam filter is making decisions under uncertainty with new information based on patterns it learned from previous information. If this doesn't fit your definition of "AI" then I think if you understood what was happening under the hood I don't think you would consider GPT to be AI either. If you toaster does learn your toast preference over time from your toasting behavior (unlike mine) then I would consider that AI as well.
  - Dalewyn 4y ago
    >A spam filter is making decisions under uncertainty with new information based on patterns it learned from previous information. If this doesn't fit your definition of "AI" No, I don't. I would generously call it an "algorithm", but at the end of the day it's just a script with lots of if statements getting processed by an interpreter. >I don't think you would consider GPT to be AI either. I don't. "AI" in this context stands for Automated Interpolation. Nothing about this is intelligent.

Dalewyn 4y ago

I don't fundamentally disagree, but if spam filters are "AI" then my bloody toaster is also artificially intelligent.

time_to_smile 4y ago
You must have a smarter toaster than I do. My toaster is a completely deterministic mechanism that knows nothing about my past toasting experience, nor makes any inference about future toast. A spam filter: - Is provided historic information about the problem - Learns from this information to construct a basic model of language - Is then provided unseen information - Then makes a probabilistic decision based on a degree of uncertainty. The exact model behind the spam filtering can be extremely simple (naive Bayes) but could easily (and probably will without you even realizing it) expand to include things like GPT. A spam filter is making decisions under uncertainty with new information based on patterns it learned from previous information. If this doesn't fit your definition of "AI" then I think if you understood what was happening under the hood I don't think you would consider GPT to be AI either. If you toaster does learn your toast preference over time from your toasting behavior (unlike mine) then I would consider that AI as well.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  >A spam filter is making decisions under uncertainty with new information based on patterns it learned from previous information. If this doesn't fit your definition of "AI" No, I don't. I would generously call it an "algorithm", but at the end of the day it's just a script with lots of if statements getting processed by an interpreter. >I don't think you would consider GPT to be AI either. I don't. "AI" in this context stands for Automated Interpolation. Nothing about this is intelligent.