This is not the age of AI. It’s the age of AI buzzword bingo.

I am literally bombarded with lurid headlines and snack content about AI on social media. It is suggested that we are now living in the age of artificial intelligence. And that we need to discuss the big questions. Unfortunately, the truth is that we are at the very, very, very beginning with AI. And all this “hype” is actually quite problematic for the further development of AI.

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Machine learning is like Scrum – everyone has been doing it for ages

The fact that we are in hype mode, especially in the tech sector, is evident in relation to AI simply because so many companies in the software sector have always wanted to do AI. That’s nonsense, of course. Just because you might be querying Google’s Vision API through one of your applications doesn’t mean you’re doing AI.

At Parashift, we are always looking for talented people to join our machine learning team. It is indeed extremely difficult to find really good people in this field and I would argue that there are not many of them. But there are a lot of developers who have done something with machine learning in the past and are now presenting themselves as machine learning engineers.

Without the necessary in-depth knowledge, it is extremely difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff and I have found that this knowledge is usually not available, especially in large companies. This is how very mediocre people get high-paying jobs. Quite simply because the people who give out these jobs can’t really judge how good someone is. This drives up salaries and ensures that solving even relatively trivial machine learning problems costs a lot of money.

I’m always amazed at how much the entire software development industry is still behind the curve when it comes to AI. Yet, and I won’t get tired of saying it, it will be artificial intelligence that will really disrupt the software industry and the job market in this area.

No, no, no and again… No.

And people like Mike Quindazzi, MD of PwC in the US, literally catapult buzzword bingo tech snack content into the world every minute via their Twitter accounts. And the army of unsuspecting people hang on to the accounts of these “thought leaders” with trepidation and take everything at face value. But almost everything is just for show. A bit of cool footage, a pithy by-line à la “Security robots are coming to a parking lot near you”.

No. There won’t be any useful “security robots” any time soon. No. AI is not taking over the hospital. No. AI won’t soon decide when we should have children. No, no, no.

AI is more in its infancy than we think. What we are doing with it at the moment is simply banal. They are the basics. Anyone who claims otherwise has not yet grasped the potential of rapidly self-learning systems and is comparing today’s achievements with what we have achieved in the past rather than with the potential that will grow from this in the future. This is a typical mistake when assessing new technology.

And the resulting philosophical debates are, in my view, counterproductive in every respect. Futurologists like Gerd Leonhard never tire of conjuring up a conflict between technology and humanity. As if it weren’t us humans who make all this technology possible and internalize it in the first place through our uncontrollable and irrepressible will to keep exploring. Painting such a picture only encourages modern-day machismo. Unlike in the past, however, the majority of people are only marginally interested in this.

Disservice

Both the generation of exaggerated expectations and the machine storming in relation to AI do not help our relationship with the field of AI at all.

Now that everyone is in hype mode, considerable amounts of money are flowing into the development of AI-based systems. However, these systems will not be able to fulfill the massive general expectations. What is looming is a new AI winter. In other words, a period in which trust, investment and efforts in AI are greatly reduced. That would be fatal.

On the other hand, reducing technology to something external and abstract prevents a genuine discussion about the real social challenges of ever faster technological progress.

And this fundamental discussion, as I often observe, mainly concerns people who were socialized before the widespread use of Internet technology. For them, the question of whether man or machine is an important one. Younger people have grown up with machines and already perceive them as part of the natural environment. It is quite possible that this will change again over time as they get older. Progress in the field of AI will produce unreal/magical technology for the uninitiated. But let’s not forget that for my grandmother, blessedly, the lighting up of the first light bulb was also a magical experience.

Composure

It’s probably asking too much to expect people like Mike Quindazzi or Gerd Leonhard to deal with things in a less sensationalist and more profound way. After all, this is their business. They earn their money with it. And of course they both make a valuable contribution in their fields.

However, I often wish the exponents in AI-Tech would keep the ball a little flatter. Act with more caution, more humility and more objectivity. I especially wish they would when someone with no tech background whatsoever loudly explains to me at an aperitif what the robots from Boston Dynamics can already do and how they will overrun us and everything. And I can only remain silent.