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Why is AI so useless for business?

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Re: Why is AI so useless for business?

#151

Post by magicalhippo »

ilaksh wrote: post #131
magicalhippo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While true for some things, it's not for others. In our application, one key operation is that the user is required to classify a line item based on the text description. There's a huge code list of possible classifications, and the user has to pick one that is the most correct. This is definitely a task that registers consciously. And, while most of the time it's fairly easy for trained users, there are often cases…

It's impossible to know the fabric there. So humans would just guess and often be wrong. That system needs an "unknown material" code.

Right, so the user would have to do further research like contacting their customer and ask.

Of course, an AI/ML system that could reliably classify a majority, and reliably classify the rest as "unknown", would be interesting. Not sure how close we are to that though.

Re: Why is AI so useless for business?

#152

Post by leto_ii »

duckmysick wrote: post #141
leto_ii wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't thinking that there are no roles that can be automated, rather that there are some that can't be. > Specifically in regards to adversarial input, humans are often the weakest link in terms of process security I have yet to encounter a (healthy) person who looks at a photo of static and mistakes it for a cat.

How about a photo of a dress where some people say it's blue and some say it's gold?

Optical illusions indeed highlight limitations in human perception. However, the dress illusion seems to me far less of a problem than mistaking noise for an object.

More relevant however is that we humans can understand that we're faced with an optical illusion and we can make adjustments accordingly. We have formed the concept of an "optical illusion" and we just place "The dress" in that category. A machine needs to be specifically trained on adversarial examples in order to be able to predict them. Once you come up with a different class of adversarial examples it will continue to fail to detect them. There is no understanding there, just more and more refined pattern matching.

Does a machine that can match any pattern actually "understand"? I would say no. But these are already philosophical considerations :D

Re: Why is AI so useless for business?

#153

Post by aSplash0fDerp »

With AI, the production of a result is not the same as an answer/solution.

Instead of a know-it-all, AI comes across as a guess-it-all (narrowing all results by the criteria programed) and as comments stated, AI is good at producing 99% maybes.

Looking past the hype, AI has thus far just added to the cacophony of noise among so called experts. (AI is not an expert)

Re: Why is AI so useless for business?

#154

Post by keenmaster »

euix wrote: post #146

I have been in this space in the financial sector for two years. I think this article is mostly spot on. There is one other piece, typically the places that can most benefit from innovation can get most of it just through automation and RPA as it is now called. Basically some guy filling a spreadsheet and copying it someone else, replace that with a bot. But even that and other processes are difficult because a lot o…

Microsoft recently developed a modular form of Microsoft Office which allows you to integrate a modifiable spreadsheet into things other than .xlsx files. Automation may be easier if disparate systems all used the same modules. This is especially true in the finance sector where everyone uses Excel.

Re: Why is AI so useless for business?

#155

Post by twelfthnight »

leto_ii wrote: post #98
falcor84 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that different from a typical human given a routine boring role? Specifically in regards to adversarial input, humans are often the weakest link in terms of process security.

I wasn't thinking that there are no roles that can be automated, rather that there are some that can't be. > Specifically in regards to adversarial input, humans are often the weakest link in terms of process security I have yet to encounter a (healthy) person who looks at a photo of static and mistakes it for a cat.

But what about if a person sees a cat but accidentally presses the dog button because they were distracted?

(To your point, though, I agree that machines can make strange errors, raising trust issues. My experience is that ML is useful in cases like recommendations or search results where a person can interact with predictions rather than being a complete replacement)

Re: Why is AI so useless for business?

#156

Post by WWLink »

lmilcin wrote: post #79
NalNezumi wrote: post #68

I'm going to go against the flow of most comment here and say that it's not always business misunderstanding AI. Bad labeled data and unclear goals/expectations sure, but the latter one should be identifiable by a good ML/Data scientist, if you have any insight to what you can actually deliver. But most ML/Data Science people have no proper understanding of AI/ML, and when just traditional "coding" can solve the prob…

I would add "AI" produces results that are hard to understand and work with. When you do "traditional coding" you are getting results that are easier to work with because you understand where they came form. Then it is easier to modify the model and understand the outcome. Your background is robotics. As a robotics example, training AI model to keep bipedal robot upright might be possible but having proper control mo…

In other words: Oh dear my fuzzy PID has gone sentient! lol. :)

Re: Why is AI so useless for business?

#157

Post by bearzoo »

twic wrote: post #94
jerzyt wrote: post #22

A better question would be why AI works great for some business (e.g. Netflix, AirBnB, Uber, Waze, Amazon) yet fails miserably for other (JC Penney, Sears). In my view, the older companies are trying to strap on AI on top of a traditional dataset, which never collected any useful signals. The new companies designed their entire business concepts around data, and collected what's needed from the get-go. Sears may have…

> AI works great for some business (e.g. Netflix, AirBnB, Uber, Waze, Amazon) Does it actually? Specifically, what has AI done for Uber?

https://eng.uber.com/machine-learning/

Re: Why is AI so useless for business?

#158

Post by dgb23 »

saalweachter wrote: post #140

I like to focus on the need for a spec. The hardest part about programming is that you have to say what you want to happen clearly and precisely. You can't just say "I want a text editor", you need to say all sorts of specific things about how the cursor moves through the text and how you decide what text is displayed on the screen when there is too much to show all at once and how line-wraps work and whether you ack…

One of the core features of a spec is semantics.

We're just getting "42" and are stumped, because we didn't describe the meaning of the question nor the answer in a formal way.

To apply meaning we need "us" or the real world. And we need to decide its form.

Re: Why is AI so useless for business?

#159

Post by bo1024 »

AI gets such a bad rap. People only think of unsolved or sort-of-solved problems as AI, and don't give AI any credit for the problems it has solved, I guess because by definition those problems seem easy.

Think how much Microsoft Office and competitors have amplified business productivity over the last 20 years (yeah yeah, make your jokes too). Word and Powerpoint and Excel are full of AI whether it's spellcheck or auto-fill, drawing algorithms like "fill with color", etc. So many things that were AI research papers of the 70s, 80s, or 90s. And those innovations continue today.

Logistics companies rely on huge amounts of optimization and problem-solving. Finding routes for drivers and deliveries, planning schedules, optimizing store layouts, etc. -- that's AI.

Employees use AI tools to improve their lives and productivity whether it's a rideshare or maps app to get to work, speech-to-text, asking Siri for answers, translating web pages, etc. All of this comes out of research in AI or related fields.

How many office jobs don't require someone to use a search engine to find and access information related to a query? Information retrieval is one million percent AI.

Robotics and automated manufacturing has been huge for a long time -- robotics is closely connected AI and related problems like control theory.

The best applications of AI have almost always been to support and enhance human decisionmaking, not replace it.

Re: Why is AI so useless for business?

#160

Post by chrisfosterelli »

bo1024 wrote: post #159

AI gets such a bad rap. People only think of unsolved or sort-of-solved problems as AI, and don't give AI any credit for the problems it has solved, I guess because by definition those problems seem easy. Think how much Microsoft Office and competitors have amplified business productivity over the last 20 years (yeah yeah, make your jokes too). Word and Powerpoint and Excel are full of AI whether it's spellcheck or a…

The AI effect: AI gets a bad rap because once something exists and is practical it's no longer called AI.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect

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