When people ask me what the phrase "artificial intelligence" means, my short answer is, it means "venture capitalists, give me some money".
But OUP asked me for a longer answer, given here and summarized in the section headings:
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when people ask me, all I can say is that in my experience as a PhD at a Boston Biotech, "AI" means a very very powerful tool that almost everyone, without push from CEO, has adopted cause in some cases AI can reduce a week of tedious work to a few hours
shrug
@emilymbender Alas, Uni of Glasgow does not seem to include access to this... 😭
@FaithfullJohn preprint link in the next post in my original thread!
@emilymbender The term "artificial intelligence" has actually been invented in order to be able to ask for funding in the first place. At least this is, what seems to me, what John McCarthy suggests in the Lighthill Debate from 1973. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyU9pm1hmYs - McCarthy makes the relevant statements starting at 2 mins 38 secs.
@pascal_costanza yes. This fact is in the article linked in the post you are replying to. You know, the encyclopedia entry written by the person you are replying to.
Stay splainy Mastodon!
@emilymbender Ugh, I’m terribly sorry. It was not my intention to mansplain this. My apologies.
I refer to it as Algorithmic Inference, which I hope is accurate.
@emilymbender The article looks very interesting. I have yet to gain permission to download it. Your abstract gives me the impression that the paper is written more from a social science perspective than a computer science perspective. Is that an accurate impression? As a multidisciplinary area of study with important social implications, I’ve found there are many legitimate ways to respond to the question “what is AI?” That is important because it is such a transformative technology. My first impulse is to answer from a hard science POV.
@emilymbender can I just say, the tendency to import science fiction literature as inevitable near future state has been this nagging, inchoate worry that I’ve struggled mightily to articulate, and seeing it laid out so clearly is both humbling and extremely useful. Thank you!
I guess we live in a society or something
@emilymbender Great explanation!
@emilymbender Thank you for sharing the pre-print. I read it with great interest.
I am curious about "McCarthy et al ... distancing themselves from adjacent work by Norbert Wiener and colleagues that was being carried out under the name cybernetics."
If you have a moment, could you please elaborate a bit or recommend where I could learn more about this rivalry? I didn't know there was a deliberate distinction between AI and cybernetics.
@emilymbender excited to read this, thank you for sharing the preprint!
@emilymbender Thank you for sharing your preprint.
@emilymbender, @scroeser relevant to your current interests. :)
@emilymbender Not a good thing in the wrong hands. Which is billions of people.
