Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

I have a failing in that I like to call things what they really are. Hence, I take on the recent AI financial boom.

AI is everywhere (too bad we don’t seem to feel that real intelligent people are everywhere, but that is another topic). AI drives our cars. AI reads our medical test results. AI approves or disapproves our loan applications. AI…well.

Much of what is called AI—see above examples—isn’t an artificial being displaying intelligence or original thought. It is, instead, a pattern recognition algorithm that assists a person in performing a task. Someone is still sitting behind the steering wheel of the car. Someone is still at the doctor’s office glancing at the results (I hope). Someone is still at the bank.

And someone, thankfully, looks at enough of the results to note that we aren’t fully recognizing people of some races, creeds, or colors.

The algorithm churns through millions of data points. The coefficients adjust so that the correct answer (if anyone knows what that is) is identified some high percentage of the time. That percentage is usually higher than an expert human, but the expert human can only function expertly six hours in every 24.

Viola’. We have artificial intelligence.

No, we have an algorithm-assisted system. Let’s be honest. Let’s be smart. Let’s be intelligent.