AI art, or horror show?
Everywhere you look lately, there's AI this, and AI that. There are even "AI-powered" products. I'm not even sure what that means. One product I saw was a small camera with "AI" to improve video stabilization. I find it hard to believe that AI can be squeezed into a tiny, handheld camera. Doesn't AI take massive server farms or next-generation "quantum" computing?
I have concluded that AI is not artificial intelligence at all... it's simulated intelligence. "AI" is nothing more than another marketing term to falsely advertise performance that doesn't exist.
By comparison, let's look at body armor. Body armor (and windows) are often represented as "bulletproof". But they aren't. At best, they're bullet resistant. A Level IIIa vest might indeed stop a 9mm handgun round, but it's not going to stop a bullet fired from a .50 caliber anti-material rifle. Not because of a larger caliber (diameter of the bullet) but because a .50 cal rifle, like the Barret M82A1, has way more powder pushing the bullet. The rounds hit their target at a much higher velocity. And, since it's a rifle meant for shooting vehicles, the bullet is made of a more durable material than a copper-jacketed 9mm handgun round.
But, "bulletproof" inspires confidence in prospective customers. Resistant... not so much.
This kind of duplicitous wordplay isn't new. Nor does false advertising always rely on words. Look at the ancient Egyptians. They covered up body odor with powerful perfumes, creating the olfactory illusion that they were clean, when instead they were just stinky. People still do that today.
"AI" is not intelligent. Dolphins are intelligent. The gorilla that learned sign language was intelligent. Dogs are intelligent. My "smart" phone? Not so much. It can't do art on its own, it has to rely on an internet connection.
Modern "AI" is simulated intelligence. Programmers basically write out scripts for what to do for the "AI" to follow. Deep Blue, the chess-playing computer, wasn't intelligent. It calculated out all the possible moves, then picked the one with the best possible outcome. All based on programming. Programmers are intelligent, not "AI".
"Simulated Intelligence" doesn't sound that good, from a marketing standpoint. "Simulated" is basically "not-real". Kind of like the old "Great Taste/Less Filling" beer ads not that long ago. Bud Light didn't contain less liquid. Your stomach still filled up the same. It was the calories in the liquid that were less. But "less calories" doesn't have the ring to it that "less filling" does.
Ask yourself this, if "AI" really was intelligent, why have so many business people proclaimed we were decades away from AI, only to be embarrassed when "AI" is rolled out shortly after their proclamations.
Don't be fooled. Be more intelligent than "AI".
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