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AI might destroy us all but it's the AI charlatans we should be worried about right now

This week Elon Musk has added to the familiar chorus of apocalyptic warnings about artificial intelligence (AI) and the supposed ‘existential threat’ the mysterious technology poses to human civilization.

Speaking at the US National Governors Association summer meeting, Musk argued that governments should be proactively looking at regulating the tech right now and that waiting to be led on the issue could be catastrophic.

While these warnings have become increasingly familiar in recent years and have the faint whiff of science-fiction about them, that needn’t lessen their impact, particularly in light of the calibre of people who are expounding them.

AGI vs AI

However, the type of AI that Musk is referring to here is so-called Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), that is machine intelligence which has comparable or superior cognitive abilities to a human being - a development which even the most optimistic (or pessimistic?) experts believe is still a couple of decades away yet.

Effectively, AGI is some way off and poses a technological innovation that is orders of magnitude more complex than the current algorithms hammering Chinese Go players, identifying our ailments and making sure our invoices get paid.

That’s not to say current innovations in the area are devoid of an ethical dimension of course. See Google DeepMind’s access to NHS patient records or debates about human biases being hard coded in machine learning algorithms for more on that.

The AI gold rush

Money too is flooding into the space, particularly in London which has the one of the highest concentrations of AI experts anywhere in the world.

Back in April, figures released by London and Partners hinted that something of an AI gold rush was underway in the capital as VC investments multiplied fivefold in just five years; topping £85m in 2016 and expected to rise this year.

And much like the Old West, the prospectors and shysters are already piling in, hoping to con any mark they can get their hands on and make a quick buck.

We’re already seeing a phenomenon similar to the wearying ‘Airbnb for x’, ‘Uber for whatever’ and even the impetus four or five years ago to attach ‘cloud’ to any vaguely tech sounding word that would take it.

Of course, many of these business ideas and products come from a good place, devised by entrepreneurs who genuinely believe in what they are doing and who have even put their own capital on the line to realise it.

Many more do not.

‘AI wash’

A report released today by American research firm Gartner has claimed that as AI becomes more and more ubiquitous the temptation for businesses to build and market an AI product just for the sake of it will get ever greater. A process Gartner dubs ‘AI washing’.

Today we’re already seeing suspiciously rebadged software and services that have become ‘AI powered’ overnight or startups that employ ‘machine learning’ and ‘algorithms’ in a vaguely nebulous way in an attempt to grab more VC cash.

AI charlatans might be too strong a term here, but as consumers, business owners and investors we are all going to have to become lithe to the tricks and sleights of hand that some will use to part us with our cash.

In comments directed at policymakers, the internet hacktivist and programmer Aaron Swartz once said, “It’s no longer OK not to understand how the Internet works.”

For investors and business owners the same could now be said for AI and will soon be true for consumers too.

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