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Why is AI so useless for business?

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Re: Why is AI so useless for business?

#341

Post by opportune »

nnq wrote: post #119
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…

> have any insight to what you can actually deliver Maybe that's the problem. In lots of AI/ML problems you just CAN'T know ahead of time what can be deliver you need to spend the time and resources to do it and then see how well it works... The problem imo is on the business side, most businesses don't know how to transform unpredictable progress into profit (even if average on a large timeframe that progress might…

>Maybe that's the problem. In lots of AI/ML problems you just CAN'T know ahead of time what can be deliver you need to spend the time and resources to do it and then see how well it works...

Sure, this is true in some cases, but in most cases I think anybody with a fundamental understanding of ML could tell you yes/no by understanding or estimating whether your input data contains enough signal to explain your desired output. In many cases where ML "fails" it's relatively obvious that there is not enough signal to cover the output; in many other cases you can be quite assured a priori that ML will give you a decent solution without needing to test it first.

There will of course be issues if your practitioners are unable to distinguish these cases or if they are structurally not empowered to say so (e.g. if they are just ordered to make a model using data X to do Y). That is probably what happens in a lot of cases when business leaders blindly decide to "add ML" to their business.

The fact of the matter is that ML is very good at solving problems where an input signal strongly correlates with the output signal, and it's appropriate over other approaches when the mapping is hard to define, such as in recognizing images of birds. If you can apply some transformation to your business problem into something with this structure, you can apply ML; otherwise you probably shouldn't.

Re: Why is AI so useless for business?

#343

Post by Havoc »

thewarrior wrote: post #15
laichzeit0 wrote: post #7

> why can't it read a PDF document and transform it into a machine-readable format? > why can't I get a computer to translate my colleague's financial spreadsheet into the format my SAP software wants? Because you probably expect it to be 100% or maybe 99.999% accurate, and we can't do that. Imagine "AI" translating someones financial spreadsheet into a different format and dropping a zero somewhere. Oops.. but your…

Why exactly do you need an AI that reads a PDF ? Unless you’re dealing with ancient data wouldn’t it be easier to have whatever that’s generating the PDF return machine readable data ? This suggests to me that lot of office jobs will be lost just by modernizing systems and making them spit out JSON

> Why exactly do you need an AI that reads a PDF ?

Much of the world is full of PDFs that are bad scans. Upside down, sideways, green, or maybe in French because why not.

>making them spit out JSON

This doesn’t just require fixing your business but every other biz you interact with. Modernize your own stuff isn’t enough. A bit like offices still list fax numbers

Re: Why is AI so useless for business?

#344

Post by esperent »

waterheater wrote: post #258
mehrdadn wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "alternative medicine" I'm not talking 19th century views here, especially given the comparison to AI. Can you pick something from like the past half-century or so? Which people called alternative medicine but which now they call medicine?

The modern medical field has authorities who largely determine what is medicine and what is "alternative medicine." I can't imagine anything which today is considered "medicine" that isn't approved by the FDA; can you? AI doesn't have such an authority. New AI methods can be deployed without asking for permission from a governing body. 19th century views on medicine is actually a better comparison than something from…

The FDA is a US body, so if you take a global perspective I'm sure you'll find lots of examples of things that are 'alternative medicine' according to the FDA but just 'medicine' according to the equivalent bodies in other countries. Someone brought up St. John's Wort as an example above, apparently now legitimate in some European countries.

Re: Why is AI so useless for business?

#345

Post by esperent »

mam2 wrote: post #249
mehrdadn wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What're some examples of things that were called "alternative medicine" but that were later proven to work and regarded as "medicine"? Edit: Since people are bringing up ancient examples and kind of missing the point of the question: I'm not looking for examples from the Roman Empire here. Let's stick with the past < 50 years. Maybe something your parents might actually remember being dismissed as "alternative medici…

Mdma in the future

We can hope. Along with various psychedelics and ketamine.

Re: Why is AI so useless for business?

#346

Post by opportune »

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…

I would argue that how you define the inputs, outputs, and architecture of a model is quite precisely providing a spec. That doesn't necessarily mean that any intermediary within the model is explainable, as you allude to, just as a spec doesn't specify how a feature gets implemented.

Re: Why is AI so useless for business?

#347

Post by jrumbut »

mehrdadn wrote: post #263
the_jeremy wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These aren't "finding loopholes in the question". Most "alternative medicine" things that work aren't new information. Humans have had literal millenia to figure out how to deal with ailments. The easiest methods that people can think of to try to solve a problem have been done by someone, and were passed around when they worked. There's things like "gargle with salt water to cure a sore throat". That's commonly done…

The entire premise of this discussion was that modern medicine currently has a flaw/double-standard/whatever about what it considers alternative medicine. Bringing up examples where medicine was flawed a century ago is very much finding a loophole and missing the point of the question.

I don't think the quote meant that "modern medicine currently has a flaw/double-standard/whatever about what it considers alternative medicine" just as there is no flaw (necessarily) in what is considered AI. I think it says that many of tomorrow's treatments are considered fringe today since they have not yet been fully examined.

As long as pain and death exist our medical knowledge is incomplete. That doesn't mean it isn't the best we have or that the process isn't the best we are capable of, it just means the job isn't done (or, in some cases, mistakes or oversights occurred).

The saying is also intentionally provocative, and in my interpretation is meant to promote curiosity and open-mindedness rather than an interest in any specific alternative therapy.

An example of an alternative therapy gone mainstream (among many others in the thread that I think fit) is folic acid supplementation for those who many become pregnant. It was not universally practiced even after some physicians had linked it to spina bifida prevention (this is my layman's understanding of history, not medical advice or judgment): https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/106/4/825

I would say many alternative therapies revolve around some supplement or another. Only rarely does the medical community agree that it is of high importance (if they do, again, I'm not a doctor I might be very wrong) and the previously alternative therapy become mainstream.

Re: Why is AI so useless for business?

#348

Post by throwawaygh »

mkl wrote: post #320
bo1024 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's still AI, it's just older-generation AI.

I think it's just maths. Otherwise, if not for the absence of calculation-by-machine, Isaac Newton and Archimedes would have been doing AI.

Lots of operations research, planning, optimization, and control theory came out of funding streams that were very much in the auspices of Artificial Intelligence. In most universities, "Artificial Intelligence" is still the name of the course where Computer Science students first encounter everything related to OR, optimization, planning, etc.

It's only since 2013 or so that AI = ML = DL.

> if not for the absence of calculation-by-machine, Isaac Newton and Archimedes would have been doing AI.

From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Leibniz's Philosophy of the Mind [1]:

"He believed that such a language would perfectly mirror the processes of intelligible human reasoning. It is this plan that has led some to believe that Leibniz came close to anticipating artificial intelligence. At any rate, Leibniz's writings about this project (which, it should be noted, he never got the chance to actualize) reveal significant insights into his understanding of the nature of human reasoning. This understanding, it turns out, is not that different from contemporary conceptions of the mind, as many of his discussions bear considerable relevance to discussions in the cognitive sciences."

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz-mind/

Re: Why is AI so useless for business?

#349

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Why is AI so useless for business?

#350

Post by keenmaster »

mkl wrote: post #327
keenmaster wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Recently? That sounds like OLE [1], which has been around since the 1990s. Have they redone it? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_Linking_and_Embedding

Microsoft’s Fluid Framework was announced at this year’s Build conference. It’s like OLE + Google Docs “on steroids.” Imagine sending an email with an embedded spreadsheet to multiple recipients who then collaborate and edit in-line without opening the Excel file. Or PowerPoint, Word, etc... Everyone would see the edits in real time. The modules are drag and droppable. The whole framework is also open source, so Microsoft envisions developers making new applications out of the core concept.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/19/21260005/microsoft-office...

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