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Ask HN: Can someone please say where AI is real?

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Re: Ask HN: Can someone please say where AI is real?

#4

Post by _m8fo »

Additionally, I'd love to see where it is being used where:

1. It's not for an adtech or financial application.

2. It's not for a company that's primarily adtech or finance.

Though clearly AI has value, it seems in practice much of it is implemented for things of questionable human value.

Some examples:

1. Search (some argue the heavy personalization has made it actually less accurate, but that's subjective).

2. Computer vision (main monetization seems to be computer vision/filters. Self driving cars will be useful if and when that comes to fruition)

3. Handwriting recognition. I think this is a great example of AI being helpful. I'm not sure how much of this is "AI" vs. just statistics and machine learning. Maybe it's all the same, in this context.

Re: Ask HN: Can someone please say where AI is real?

#5

Post by forgottenacc57 »

_m8fo wrote: post #4

Additionally, I'd love to see where it is being used where: 1. It's not for an adtech or financial application. 2. It's not for a company that's primarily adtech or finance. Though clearly AI has value, it seems in practice much of it is implemented for things of questionable human value. Some examples: 1. Search (some argue the heavy personalization has made it actually less accurate, but that's subjective). 2. Comp…

It's a funny thing that handwriting recognition is seen as worthwhile. Who writes by hand any more, and who prefers handwriting to a keyboard?

Re: Ask HN: Can someone please say where AI is real?

#6

Post by _m8fo »

forgottenacc57 wrote: post #5
_m8fo wrote: post #4

Additionally, I'd love to see where it is being used where: 1. It's not for an adtech or financial application. 2. It's not for a company that's primarily adtech or finance. Though clearly AI has value, it seems in practice much of it is implemented for things of questionable human value. Some examples: 1. Search (some argue the heavy personalization has made it actually less accurate, but that's subjective). 2. Comp…

It's a funny thing that handwriting recognition is seen as worthwhile. Who writes by hand any more, and who prefers handwriting to a keyboard?

You don't have to actually write for it to be helpful. There are billions of handwritten documents out there already. OCR and handwriting recognition can help with archiving.

Re: Ask HN: Can someone please say where AI is real?

#7

Post by mindcrime »

There is no real answer to this question, as the goal-posts for "what is AI" are always moved as soon as AI can do something. And the distinction between AI and "just a computer program" is kinda arbitrary. All AI is "just a computer program"if it's running on a computer.

Edit:

To expand on this a little more... I think it's important to remember that "AI" isn't a "thing" so much as a "field" or a family of (possibly somewhat related) techniques. That is, AI includes specific algorithms and approaches ranging from automated reasoners and inference engines, to pattern recognition using deep learning, to evolutionary algorithms, planning algorithms, etc., etc. What there isn't yet is one single artificial general intelligence that we can talk about as the be-all end-all of AI.

So yeah, individual organizations are using AI techniques all over the place. But nobody is using "AI" because it doesn't exist yet.

Re: Ask HN: Can someone please say where AI is real?

#8

Post by bsvalley »

In 1999 Amazon created a program that would look at your purchase history and recommend you new books. That's a great example of AI in the real world.

In 2016, investors decided to make AI a new priority (it kinda was there for ever). So all the tech companies use this word today to stay "relevant".

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