The Snake Oil Merchants Of AI: Princeton Professor Deflates The Hype

Throughout history, the exploitation of hype around a newfound technology is very well known. A century ago, people sold mineral oil dubbed as snake oil as a panacea for all cures. Though that myth has been busted, these snake-oil merchants took different forms over the years. Today, they seem to have entered the realms of AI and other advanced fields. Addressing the recent hype and the emergence of snake oil salesmen in AI, noted Princeton professor Arvind Narayanan, who is well-versed with ethics in artificial intelligence, did some machine learning myth-busting at a talk he gave recently at MIT. His talk was titled, “How to recognise AI snake oil”. A noted Princeton professor who is well-versed with ethics surrounding artificial intelligence, did some machine learning myth-bu