“AI where it is now \u2013 a whirlwind of crap”! *Yeah, that’s Prof. Olia Lialina, all right. It’s good to hear from Olia.<\/p>\n
Happy new year, dear nettimers!<\/p>\n
In the mid of AI summer, I often think back about last spring, and one product, or rather it’s announcement, that brought us to where we are now.<\/p>\n
\/https:\/\/pad.profolia.org\/s\/I_ve_built_a_simple_AI — illustrated version with links \/<\/p>\n
AI\u2019s 75 year history is a chain of periods filled with excitement and anticipation of the singularity, taking turns with times of ignorance known as AI winters. I on purpose count from right after WWII \u2013 1946, when Mechanical (later Machine) Translation effort has started, and not from 1956 when the term AI was coined, because the term is less important when the idea that machines can perform understanding (of languages), and also because it was exactly the failure of Machine Translation that designated beginning of the first known AI winter in the beginning of 1960\u2019s.<\/p>\n
On the eve of 2024 we, no doubt, are enjoying AI midsummer. It\u2019s so brutally, unnaturally hot, that some start to suspect that this time it won\u2019t be just a winter that will compensate for the heat, but rather something usually depicted as an ice age or a nuclear winter is in front of us. It will be very cold and dark for a very long time\u2026<\/p>\n
The last winter, which was caused by the failure of the 5th generation computer and logic based AI systems in the late 80\u2019s was rather short. It was over in the mid 90\u2019s. From that time research in machine learning grew steadily. But science and industry seasons do not necessarily correlate to the one\u2019s in mass media. Public attention at that time was glued to the Internet, WWW, Social Networks and all of the above becoming magically available on mobile devices in the end of the noughties.<\/p>\n
In the beginning of the tens mass media started to report about Big Data and the Internet of Things. Let\u2019s, from today\u2019s perspective, call it a thaw.<\/p>\n
Real spring, or mass media AI spring started in 2016. I see 3 events that made a break in popular consciousness:\u2013 Hanson\u2019s humanoid robot Sophia,\u2013 Google\u2019s neural network algorithm Deep Dreamand\u2013 Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s Jarvis.<\/p>\n
One still remembers Sophia\u2019s glorious appearances at the United Nations and on the covers of lifestyle magazines. Sophia\u2019s existence also started a wave of discussion about ethics in AI and social robotics, that are still actual and vital.<\/p>\n
Psychedelic images of Deep Dream are also hard to forget. And the impact of the algorithm is still here since style transfer and surreal visuals became AI\u2019s flagship businesses.<\/p>\n
But Jarvis? Why do I even mention this rather modest personal project of Zuckerberg to control his house facilities through his phone? The app itself was not remarkable, but the words that announced it were.<\/p>\n
There were two posts. On January 3, 2016, Zuckerberg published his New Year resolution: \u201cMy personal challenge for 2016 is to build a simple AI to run my home and help me with my work.\u201d And on December 19, 2016 he reported \u201cI\u2019ve built a simple AI\u201d.<\/p>\n
These posts quoted many times during 2016 and 2017 started a trend talking about AI as if it is an app, a product, something at hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve built a simple AI\u201d played a big role in bringing AI to where it is now \u2013 a whirlwind of crap, when not only every further automation in software products, but simply every new function or feature is marketed as Artificial Intelligence.<\/p>\n
That AI became a synonym to a chatbot is somewhat historically justifiable. But there is hardly any app today that is not marketed as AI. A filter is an AI, a file is referred to as an AI output. Ai (only A is upper case, as if a given name) in the slang of Humane and name of their Ai Pin is the sign of the same process. AI is an object, let\u2019s call it Ai.<\/p>\n
In 2016 \u201cI\u2019ve built a simple AI\u201d suggested that AI was a thing. Could be simple, could be complex, but a thing, ready to be packed. In my opinion, it was the event that marked the beginning of objectification of the Artificial Intelligence concept, its oversimplification, and devaluation.<\/p>\n
— “AI where it is now \u2013 a whirlwind of crap”! *Yeah, that’s Prof. Olia Lialina, all right. It’s good to hear from Olia. Happy new year, dear nettimers! In the mid of AI summer, I often think back about last spring, and one product, or rather it’s announcement, that brought us to where we are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"yoast_head":"\n
\n# distributed via
\n#
\n# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
\n# more info: https:\/\/www.nettime.org
\n# contact: nettime-l-owner@lists.nettime.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"