A revolution in communication between people and computers If you’ve ever attended an conference, I bet you passed under the placid gaze of a chrome-plated humanoid, lovingly selected from an that marketing teams can’t resist pasting on every billboard these days. AI ocean of creepy robot stock images Clearly, I’m personally guilty of using -blue sci-fi art to lure weary travelers to my . It certainly works, which is why it’s a pity that those images have to do with . octarine blog next to nothing AI Robots are very exciting but mostly useless. Today’s AI is mostly boring but very useful. You’d think we’d all be more ashamed of ourselves, but don’t worry, is to go away, no matter how much we all cry wolf. Here’s why. AI too useful AI gives programmers an alternative way to tell computers what to do. Marketing folk run around trying to get your attention with sci-fi gimmicks, but the reason you’ll stick around long enough to buy into is entirely different. The real story is about communication with machines. AI To understand why this new way to talk to machines is so useful and why it’s a technological revolution, let’s forget machines for a moment and talk about people. I’ll lay the cards flat on the table so there’s no more purple mystery about what AI is for. AI gives programmers an alternative way to tell computers what to do. How people talk to one another We express our wishes to other people in two ways. One is with explicit instructions, the other is with examples. If you wanted to learn how to predict my Starbucks order, you could follow me around on my travels and you’d probably notice that the quad espresso I order in US airports becomes a latte in Taipei, Mumbai, and Nairobi. What’s up with that? Given a few more examples, you’d probably figure out the rule yourself. That’s what AI does — . There’s no way you’d figure it out if you only saw me order Starbucks only once or twice (not enough ) or if you only observed 50 counts of me ordering my usual cappuccino at the place on my street ( , since that place is not Starbucks). Same goes for AI. turns examples into instructions data irrelevant data Of course, I could also have just told you my Starbucks rule explicitly since I can express it easily: (Don’t judge me!) “If they have half-and-half, order 4 shots of espresso in a tall cup, then fill ‘er up with half-and-half. If they don’t, order a tall latte with an extra shot.” The point here is that if I’m teaching a human travel companion, it’s awfully nice to have access to both modes of communication. When explicit instructions are easy to come up with and express, I can program a friend the way people have been talking to computers for decades: . if this, do that But what if I don’t even know why I order a cappuccino on some New York days and flat white on others? I can’t give you the formula because . But I can ask you to watch me and see if can figure out the pattern. Maybe there is one, maybe there isn’t, but it’s awesome that you could at least work it out. Without , a computer can’t to . It’s explicit instructions or bust. even I don’t know it you try ML/AI try find a pattern AI is about human self-expression. Maybe you’d realize that some places have a smell that does it. You might not know why that works (perhaps the smell triggers a feeling related to drinking cappuccinos with my father after the theatre, but you don’t have access to those information) but you’ll realize that you’re able to predict what I’ll do accurately. Eventually, you’ll feel confident enough to say, I’d be standing there with my jaw dropped because I don’t know how you know that. After a while I won’t worry about it, I’ll just . And as long as my preferences don’t change, you’ll keep getting it right, even if . “Flat white this time? Yeah, I got this.” trust you neither of us knows why My ability to give you my explicit instructions is . My ability to ask you to learn from relevant examples is the . traditional programming essence of machine learning and AI So here’s why : in real life, there’s no way I’m giving up my ability to fall back on teaching with examples if I’m not clever enough to come up with the instructions. Absolutely not! I’m pretty sure I use examples more than instructions to communicate with other humans when I stumble around the real world. AI is not a fad AI means I can communicate with computers that second way — via examples — not only by instructions, are you seriously asking me to suddenly gag my own mouth? Remember, in the old days we had to rely primarily on instructions only because we couldn’t do it the other way, in part because processing all those examples would . strain the meager CPUs of last century’s poor desktops But now that humanity has unlocked its ability to express itself to machines via examples, why would we suddenly give that option up entirely? A second way of talking to computers is too important to drop like yesterday’s shoulderpads. What we should drop is our expectation that there’s a one-size-fits-all way of communicating with computers about every problem. Say what you mean and say it the way that works best. Sometimes you want to give instructions and sometimes you want to feed in a bunch of examples instead. Some tasks are so complicated that you can’t hold their instructions in your memory. Because AI allows you to automate the ineffable, it’s our only option for those situations where you can’t fathom the instructions. Where you’re not smart enough to work out what those patterns mean yourself or where the instructions are so complicated that you forgot the first line by the time you got to the seven thousandth one. Want to memorize all this? Me neither. Computers don’t mind, though. Computers don’t mind memorizing long boring or instruction manuals. They can churn through those examples even though that’s a task you wouldn’t want to touch with a bargepole. When all the are automated with straightforward explicit instructions, progress will demand working on the complicated ones. In that zone, it’ll be AI or nothing. example sets Some tasks are so complicated that you can’t hold their instructions in your memory. low hanging fruit tasks If those tasks are very complicated, you’ll probably not be able to automate them flawlessly, but with AI you still might do better than nothing. (Don’t forget to .) If you do get flawless performance, my first instinct is to wonder whether your task . Don’t convert between dollars and cents with AI… seriously, what are you doing?! It’s where the task is too hard the old way that you might turn to AI. That’s also why the is to start with the task and double-check that you can’t solve it without AI first. build safety nets might be so simple that you really have solved it the traditional way instead *should* first step in AI If you’re keen to get started with letting AI make itself useful to you, here’s a guide that decision-makers should read before anyone even thinks about data or technical nitty-gritty.
