The AI Delusion (2018) by Gary Smith is an attempt to show how overblown the hype about Artificial Intelligence is. In part it succeeds with some interesting tales of how various AI systems have failed and also by pointing out flaws in just picking correlations. But it also fails by seriously considering the way modern Machine Learning (ML) systems have solved problems that people thought intractable 20 years ago and to consider if there is more progress where it might lead. It is something of an antidote to people who think ML is about to put everyone out of work and lead to the Singularity but it goes far to far the other way.
There are some fascinating stories in the book. In 2008 and 2012 Barack Obama’s data analytics team was regarded as great and crucial in helping him win. Few people know that in 2016 Hilary Clinton had an ML system that instructed her that it wasn’t worth campaigning in Michigan and a number of states where Obama had done well but she’d done poorly against Bernie Sanders. The book alleges that Bill Clinton thought she was in trouble in these states and was furious but was over ruled by the computer.
The book has other stories like that about trading and other things. But also many that are repeated in other books like the one about where to armor aircraft in WWII.
Smith puts forward the case about how ML can learn specific things but can be easily fooled. He also spends far too many chapters on ML that is over fitted. Introduction to ML courses teach students the dangers and how to avoid that.
The chapters on finance go to far. Correlation and chartism are well known. I’ve also heard quants on podcasts calmly say quite happily that ML doesn’t really work on markets because of false positives. However, something quants do does work. Human traders are being replaced, but no by ML.
The AI Delusion does make a few good points and will have some good stories for most people. It also contains a lot on how statistics can lead people to make mistakes. Smith’s recommendation that we don’t defer to ML is also pretty wise. However, the case it makes is overdone and Smith spends too much time attacking a straw man of what. Whether ML will lead to job losses and the Singularity is highly questionable, but there is more to this than Smith lets on.
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