The current situation of artificial intelligence in 2019

This is a common psychological phenomenon: any word, when repeated enough times, will eventually lose all meaning and disintegrate into phonetic nothingness, like a soaked tissue. For many of us, the term "artificial intelligence" collapsed in this way long ago. Today, AI is ubiquitous in the tech world, said to power everything from TVs to toothbrushes, yet the meaning of the words themselves has never faded quite like this before.

It shouldn't be this way.

Although the term "artificial intelligence" is undoubtedly overused, the technology’s impact is greater than ever—both for better and worse. It is applied in healthcare and warfare; it helps people create music and books; it screens your resume, assesses your credit, and edits the photos you take with your phone. In short, whether you like it or not, it makes decisions that affect your life.

Tech companies and advertisers always talk up AI with extravagant claims that are hard to swallow. Take, for example, Oral-B’s Genius X toothbrush, one of many devices at this year’s CES claiming to have so-called “artificial intelligence” features. But a closer look at the opening of the press release reveals it simply provides very basic feedback on whether you’re brushing in the right place and for the right amount of time. While it includes some smart sensors that can detect the toothbrush’s position in your mouth, calling it artificial intelligence is nonsense—nothing more.

Without the hype, there is misunderstanding. Media coverage can exaggerate research breakthroughs, such as attaching Terminator images to any vague AI story. This usually comes down to confusion about the nature of AI. For non-experts, it can be a tricky topic, and people often mistakenly conflate contemporary AI with the version they know best: the scientifically imagined conscious computers that are many times smarter than humans. Experts call this specific AI “general artificial intelligence,” and if we ever create something like it, it’s probably still far in the future. Until then, overstating the intelligence or capabilities of AI systems does no one any favors.