<nettime> “I’ve built a simple AI”

[olia lialina via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Happy new year, dear nettimers!

In the mid of AI summer, I often think back about last spring, and one 
product, or rather it's announcement, that brought us to where we are now.

/https://pad.profolia.org/s/I_ve_built_a_simple_AI -- illustrated 
version with links /


AI’s 75 year history is a chain of periods filled with excitement and 
anticipation of the singularity, taking turns with times of ignorance 
known as AI winters. I on purpose count from right after WWII – 1946, 
when Mechanical (later Machine) Translation effort has started, and not 
from 1956 when the term AI was coined, because the term is less 
important when the idea that machines can perform understanding (of 
languages), and also because it was exactly the failure of Machine 
Translation that designated beginning of the first known AI winter in 
the beginning of 1960’s.On the eve of 2024 we, no doubt, are enjoying AI 
midsummer. It’s so brutally, unnaturally hot, that some start to suspect 
that this time it won’t be just a winter that will compensate for the 
heat, but rather something usually depicted as an ice age or a nuclear 
winter is in front of us. It will be very cold and dark for a very long 
time…The last winter, which was caused by the failure of the 5th 
generation computer and logic based AI systems in the late 80’s was 
rather short. It was over in the mid 90’s. From that time research in 
machine learning grew steadily. But science and industry seasons do not 
necessarily correlate to the one’s in mass media. Public attention at 
that time was glued to the Internet, WWW, Social Networks and all of the 
above becoming magically available on mobile devices in the end of the 
noughties.In the beginning of the tens mass media started to report 
about Big Data and the Internet of Things. Let’s, from today’s 
perspective, call it a thaw.Real spring, or mass media AI spring started 
in 2016. I see 3 events that made a break in popular consciousness:– 
Hanson’s humanoid robot Sophia,– Google’s neural network algorithm Deep 
Dreamand– Mark Zuckerberg’s Jarvis.One still remembers Sophia’s glorious 
appearances at the United Nations and on the covers of lifestyle 
magazines. Sophia’s existence also started a wave of discussion about 
ethics in AI and social robotics, that are still actual and 
vital.Psychedelic images of Deep Dream are also hard to forget. And the 
impact of the algorithm is still here since style transfer and surreal 
visuals became AI’s flagship businesses.But Jarvis? Why do I even 
mention this rather modest personal project of Zuckerberg to control his 
house facilities through his phone? The app itself was not remarkable, 
but the words that announced it were.There were two posts. On January 3, 
2016, Zuckerberg published his New Year resolution: “My personal 
challenge for 2016 is to build a simple AI to run my home and help me 
with my work.” And on December 19, 2016 he reported “I’ve built a simple 
AI”.These posts quoted many times during 2016 and 2017 started a trend 
talking about AI as if it is an app, a product, something at hand.“I’ve 
built a simple AI” played a big role in bringing AI to where it is now – 
a whirlwind of crap, when not only every further automation in software 
products, but simply every new function or feature is marketed as 
Artificial Intelligence.That AI became a synonym to a chatbot is 
somewhat historically justifiable. But there is hardly any app today 
that is not marketed as AI. A filter is an AI, a file is referred to as 
an AI output. Ai (only A is upper case, as if a given name) in the slang 
of Humane and name of their Ai Pin is the sign of the same process. AI 
is an object, let’s call it Ai.In 2016 “I’ve built a simple AI” 
suggested that AI was a thing. Could be simple, could be complex, but a 
thing, ready to be packed. In my opinion, it was the event that marked 
the beginning of objectification of the Artificial Intelligence concept, 
its oversimplification, and devaluation.


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