I stumbled upon this article as the headline was just too attractive to me.
I thought this was an interesting study if you want to understand where AI is headed next and the origins of it in the earlier years. The report is done by Karen Hao, an AI reporter at MIT Technology Review. The important to note here is the effort done to perform this study. According to her tweet, she actually downloaded all 16,625 AI papers abstract from an open research database, arXiv. So the findings are really solid, in my point of view.
The study found 3 major trends, as highlighted in the report:
- A shift toward machine learning during the late 1990s and early 2000s (from knowledge-based systems)
- A rise in the popularity of neural networks beginning in the early 2010s
- Growth in reinforcement learning the past few years
The point here is that, in the researchers world, the term AI has existed much earlier since 1950s. The research work certainly has evolved but the application of it has not. Sure, there are thousands of companies trying to use AI to solve problems but the environment does not allow them to foster fast enough with all the backlash received due to tighter regulations, cyber-security issues, data privacy, etc.
A case in point, a report by NBC recently revealed that “people’s online photos are being used without consent to train face recognition AI”. And it’s being done by IBM.You can read more about it here. So one of your pictures could have been used. This will only make people angry, although may feel ok about it. I’m neutral. To them and other industry insiders, they needed the data.
So where and how do we draw the line here?
Dayana Omar 