Wednesday, June 13, 2018

"The Real Scandal of AI: Awful Stock Photos"

Adam Geitgey at Medium, May 30:
There’s been a lot of talk recently about whether or not AI research is in a bubble. Some people are worried that we’re approaching another AI winter — a period where AI research funding dries up if AI can’t deliver on the hype.
Sure, there is a lot hype and bad reporting around AI. Just look at all the news reports calling Sophia the “first AI citizen” when it’s really just a weird puppet head hooked up to a chat bot:
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*u1xNfzOUa1376kEqoQ2_FQ.jpeg
Spoiler: No, it can’t.
But even if the recent advancements in Deep Learning aren’t really intelligence per se and don’t get us closer to Strong AI, deep learning has definitely made an impact. It’s led to huge advancements in real products the help real people every day, like Google Translate:
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1400/1*fWdXrTmVbYNTyBJcKCq4Iw.png
So let’s not argue about whether or not we are in an AI bubble. Instead, let’s focus on an even more important issue that we can all get behind — the absolutely atrocious stock photos used in almost every single news story about AI.

Here’s what I’m talking about:
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/1*iYPd2BRa-XF4fXpoEYwvRA.png
It seems like every article on AI has a picture like this — just a glowing head overflowing with the power of computers.

I guess part of the problem is that stories without pictures are boring and it’s really hard to illustrate the idea of AI. So they have to throw in something....
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