(Actual) progress in #Ai
What a big word. Artificial intelligence. I decided to do a bit of digging today to find interesting and insightful ways to think about it.
'Ways to think about Machine Learning'
First I suggest you read 'Way to think about machine learning' by Ben Evans. It unpacks machine learning and help you think beyond the big word (AI). Here are a few quotes that resonated:
About the 'Ai will fix our problems' part...
“the most common misconception that comes up in talking about ML - that it is in some way a single, general purpose thing, on a path to HAL 9000, and that Google or Microsoft have each built *one*, or that Google ‘has all the data’, or that IBM has an actual thing called ‘Watson’.”
About the 'Ai will steal our jobs' part...
“this is what automation always does; Excel didn’t give us artificial accountants, Photoshop and Indesign didn’t give us artificial graphic designers and indeed steam engines didn’t give us artificial horses. Rather, we automated one discrete task, at massive scale.”
The State of AI
The State of AI is yearly report. It goes in depth into the subject considering 4 key dimensions (research, talent, industry, politics). I think it's a must read if if you 'get paid' to talk to/educate people regarding AI (I'm looking at you, advertising agencies, media agencies and consultants). There's a lot of meat and it's super interesting. I'll need to re-read a few times to begin to understand all of this.