#actuallyai

The usage of the term AI or Artificial Intelligence, has grown since the release of ChatGPT, whilst the concept and use cases of chatgpt are frivolous, the issues lie with the factually incorrect usage of the term Artificial Intelligence in many products, news articles, marketing, and a host of other cases since.

From shopping online to simple conversation, the term AI is frequently used incorrectly for dramatic effect, attention, and financial gain and this creates a crippling inflation in the "wow factor" of artificial intelligence. Causing actual AI products to be deemed less genuine and significant and surprising or ground breaking, when in fact AI is still rare and something to marvel.

It may seem a pathetic complaint or some pedantic literature issue, but it is much more significant than may seem at first. The implications of this generalisation of AI cause a misunderstanding of what artificial intelligence actually is thus making it important to clearly and explicitly present the difference between AI technology and all other "smart" machines.

An Artificial Intelligence powered system implies the system is capable of learning from either mistakes or general inputs, comprehending information in context, and is the result of a conglomeration of neural networks.

This differs greatly from "automatic" systems and technology, which simply follow preset instructions and adapt based on preset adaptation instructions.


The importance to ensure that AI is considered seperate is a necessity as it either intentionally or unintentionally mis-informs society into a belief that anything of an automatic nature is likely/certainly AI. This is harmful and creates negative mindsets in respect to AI and changes the beliefs and preconceived benefits of AI on a vast scale. An example of this is when a self driving car, marketed as using AI, makes a mistake. It is important to clarify the actual usage of AI in a self driving car, it is true that a portion of self driving cars use AI to navigate and operate the vehicle. This is an accumulation of neural networks in conjunction to create AI. However, often self driving cars use only a few neural networks, or only programmed sequences which run on sensor based logic and should not be considered AI.

The implications of allowing people to believe that all self driving vehicles use AI, is a risk to society as people begin to believe AI is dangerous and harmful. When in fact if managed and used appropriately, AI can benefit people in a range of use cases.

I take reference from Art Wittman, Editor of Brainyard, who has explained his perspective on the usage of the term "AI" inappropriately and out of place.

You can read more about Artificial Intelligence and Neural Networks in my paper on Neural Networks in Society, here.