Visionary Elon Musk fears it. Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking worried about it. Microsoft’s Bill Gates embraces it. Science fiction writer Philip K. Dick wrote about androids having the capacity to dream because of it. At HIMSS 2019, everyone talked about it.
Contrary to portrayals in the movies or in the non-industry press, AI is not currently a pure, natural intelligence like that of humans. Today’s AI systems do not think or act independently, and they are a far cry from the androids with positronic brains you might have seen on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Instead, data models form the basis of all AI and drive the results that we interpret to be intelligence.
Excerpts from AI: Augmented Intelligence or Electric Sheep? PSQH, Spring/Summer 2019