AI Is Not Real: How Intelligent Is Artificial Intelligence?

This is the bold statement that Scientific American gave regarding the matter. In their recent statement, they claimed that what people call nowadays as Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not actually AI, but something else entirely.

Sure, we hear the description of AI branded on almost every new tech nowadays. Even on smartphones, companies now love to call their camera technology as something powered by AI.

But experts are agreeing that there is no real AI yet, or at least not in the sense that most of us know and in the sense that popular fiction has portrayed so far.

Even Samsung's VP of innovation and the co-inventor of Siri Luc Julia believes that AI is not “artificial intelligence,” but rather “augmented intelligence.” In his interview with Microsoft, Julia explained that what we commonly know as AI is simply mathematics and statistics. Rather than a machine having a real mind and thought of its own, it is more of us humans augmenting our intelligence into the machines and technologies that we create.

He also called this process a “machine learning,” where a machine is programmed to adapt to patterns and processes but not to the point that it will have a learning and thinking capability.

So if these tech and machines that proclaim as AI or AI-powered are not really artificial intelligence, what can they be called? Automation.

Experts believe that AI, as we know it now, is simply automation. It is simply a set preprocess that are programmed to be executed in a specific time or a specific trigger. Imagine a factory full of workers with different tasks. Now, an automated system will have machines do all these supposed human tasks in the same manner and maybe even faster. This is not AI, but rather, just automation.

However, real AI will come. The progress of fully realizing this technology is not too far from now, and various sectors are now preparing themselves fro what AI may hold for them.