The public inadequately understands current state of AI

Current applications of AI revolve entirely around machine learning. However, researcher Zachary Lipton says that is not the message you get from most media coverage on AI.

Unfortunately, the general public is poorly informed about the current state of AI technologies, and researchers and journalists who cover their work are doing a poor job of explaining to people what recent advancements in AI are really about.

That is the view of Zachary Lipton, an assistant professor and researcher at the Tepper School of Business and affiliated faculty at the Machine Learning Department, both with Carnegie Mellon University. In addition, given some of the recent coverage of AI in the popular press, it is hard to argue with the perspective.

In a presentation at the recent MIT EmTech 2018 conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Lipton talked about how people with little technical skills and understanding are increasingly becoming influencers in the world of AI, taking advantage of the hype cycle around AI to promote themselves. This, in turn, feeds a media system that gives more attention to splashy quotes than to deep technical explanations.

How many times in the last year have we read headlines about Elon Musk's warnings to humanity about the coming robot apocalypse? Musk's statements seem more informed by Hollywood than any factual understanding of the current state of AI technologies.

These topics are very different from what today's AI is really all about, which is machine learning. The most advanced applications, from natural language generation to facial recognition are driven purely by pattern matching.

Article, courtesy of Ed Burns, read the full version on Search Enterprise AI by TechTarget