As technology evolves, it becomes more difficult to distinguish “real” AI from marketing. • Maine Morning Star

In his college classes at Stanford University, Jehangir Amjad asks his students a curious question: Was the 1969 moon landing a product of artificial intelligence?

It may sound like a work of science fiction or time travel, he said, but understanding the history of AI answers their question.

“I would actually say that yes, a lot of the algorithms that were part of what got us to the Moon are also precursors to a lot of what we see today,” said Amjad, chief technology officer from the Bay Area and computer specialist. professor at Stanford. “These are essentially precursors to the same type of similar ‘next, next, next generation’ algorithms.

Amjad poses the question to his students to highlight how difficult it is to actually define “artificial intelligence.” This has become even more difficult as technology explodes in sophistication and public awareness.

“The beauty and the dilemma is: ‘What is AI?’ is actually very difficult to define,” Amjad said.

This broad definition – and public understanding – of “artificial intelligence” can make it difficult for both consumers and the tech industry to parse what is “real” AI and what is simply marketed as such.

Swapnil Shinde, Los Altos, Calif.-based CEO and co-founder of AI accounting software Zeni, saw this through his investment firm Twin Ventures. Over the past two years, Shinde has seen a sharp increase in the number of companies seeking funding describing themselves as “AI-powered” or “AI-driven.” The AI ​​market is very saturated and some “AI companies” actually only use the technology in a very small part of their products, he said.

“It’s very easy to understand after a few conversations if the startup just builds a wrapper around ChatGPT and calls it a product,” Shinde said. “And if that’s the case, they won’t survive for long, because it’s not really deep technology. This does not solve a very deep and painful problem that has been raised by humans for a long time. »

The rush to build AI

Since the start of 2023, Theresa Fesinstine said she has observed a race in the corporate world to introduce AI technologies in order to remain competitive and relevant. That’s when she launched her AI education company, peoplepower.ai, where she leads workshops, teaches organizations how AI is built, and consults with them on tools that could best meet their needs.

In an age where everyone wants to have the most advanced tools, basic AI training can help businesses and their employees navigate the technology landscape, said the Norwalk, Conn.-based founder.

In an effort to appear more innovative, companies can present basic automations or rules-based alerts as exciting new AI tools, Fesinstine said. Although these tools use some fundamental AI technologies, companies might overestimate the tool’s capabilities, she said, especially when they use the popular buzz term “generative AI,” which uses complex algorithms and deep learning techniques to learn, adapt and predict.

The pressure on businesses to keep up with the latest developments can also lead some organizations to purchase new AI software tools, even if they don’t have a strategy for implementing and training their employees in the best way. to use them.

“He’s a predator, I would say,” Fesinstine said. “For businesses, especially those that don’t know what AI will look like and what it should be, people are afraid of being left behind. »

Some technologists argue that ambiguity over what constitutes or does not constitute AI allows all kinds of tech products to be sold as such. Predictive analytics, for example, which uses data to predict future outcomes, can be “borderline” AI, said Ed Watal, Reston, Va., founder of the IT and AI strategy consulting firm Intellibus.

True AI systems use algorithms to sort, analyze and examine data, and make informed decisions about what to do with it, based on what humans ask them to do. The “learning” aspects of these systems are how the AI ​​becomes smarter over time through neural networks that take feedback and use history to better accomplish tasks over time.

“But the purists, the purists, will say that AI is just machine learning and deep learning,” he said.

“AI washing”

Although there appears to be an AI-based company promising to do virtually every task for you, technologists warn that today’s “real” AI has its limits. Watal said the industry has witnessed some “AI washing” or over-promising and over-marketing of AI uses.

A company that promises its AI tool can build a website from scratch could be an example, he said. Even if ChatGPT or another AI algorithm can generate the code, it can’t create a fully functional website, he said.

“You wouldn’t be able to do things that require, say, something as simple as sending an email, because sending an email requires a server (transfer protocol of plain mail),” Watal said. “Yes, you could have this AI tool also write the code for an email server, but you would still have to host it and run it somewhere. So it’s not as simple as clicking a button and having a whole application.

Amjad, who is also head of AI Platform at generative AI company Ikigai, said companies sometimes over-promise and over-market AI’s ability to perform original and creative tasks.

Even though artificial intelligence tools are excellent at pattern recognition, sorting data and generating ideas based on existing content, humans remain the source of original and creative tasks and results, he said. he declared.

“People would say that in the public imagination AI creates a lot of things, but in reality it regurgitates. That’s not creating, is it? said Amjad. “And we should doubt where we start to see claims of originality from AI, because originality is a very human trait.”

This certainly isn’t the first time a new technology has captured public attention and sparked a marketing frenzy, Watal said. About a decade ago, the concept of “Web3,” or a decentralized Internet built on blockchain technology, quickly gained popularity, he said.

Blockchain technology functions as a sort of public ledger, where transactions and records are kept in an accessible forum. It is the basis of many cryptocurrencies and, although it has become more common in recent years, it has not taken over the internet as predicted a decade ago.

“The cloud” is another example of a tech marketing overhaul, Watal said. The concept of remote servers storing information separately from your hardware dates back decades, but after Apple introduced the Elastic Compute Cloud in 2006, every tech company fought to claim the cloud.

Only time will tell whether we overuse or underuse the term artificial intelligence, Amjad said.

“I think it’s very clear that the hype and the promises and the applications are actually quite real,” Amjad said. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t, in some areas, overdo it.”

Amjad suspects interest in AI will only grow, but he believes Ikigai’s technology is the one that will prove itself amid the hype cycle.

“Yes, he arrived and captured the public imagination. And I’m absolutely thrilled about that part, but it’s something that builds on a very long tradition of these things,” Amjad said. “And I would like it to help temper some expectations…the hype cycle has actually existed in AI, at least a few times, over the last 50 years perhaps.”