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Comment by wunderflix | Hacker News Reader

I really liked the definition of AI (back in 2015) by Seth Godin - a marketer!

>One common insightful definition of AI: Artificial Intelligence is everything a computer can't do yet. As soon as it can, we call it obvious.

If the term is used like that it does make sense to me.

https://seths.blog/2015/04/the-noise-in-our-head-and-artific...

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> Seth Godin - a marketer!

Like most clever things marketers do, that quote is borrowed nearly verbatim from a much older quote without reference.

"AI is whatever hasn't been done yet."

From Douglas Hofstadter quoting Larry Tesler in 1980

Anyone who has studied AI and its history at all knows that similar quotes to Godin have been going on since the 70s an even that quote from Tesler.

There's an entire wikipedia article on the AI effect[0] if you want to dive deeper.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect

Products are shipped which claim to use "AI". This is self-contradictory with this definition, and no product can ever exist claiming AI with it. I'm fine with that, but then it seems that the term would be completely useless, when "science-fiction" already exist (and, even if it is not always, can be realistic)

I understand what you are saying and I tend to agree. But: AI would then be way more specific to computers. Science Fiction is a very broad term also applied to biology, engineering etc.

Well unless you read it as “humans do the hard part” and so a product with AI can make substantial use of computer systems as long as humans are at the helm. The definition is obviously bad because you wouldn’t consider a fire AI because a computer can’t do that. The definition needs an additional stipulation that AI is a computing program.

That's not self-contradictory, it's just proof that products which claim to use "AI" can't possibly work. Quite consistent with what's observed in practice.

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