This is the best "visualization" / "explanation" of the possibilities and limits of AI that I've seen.
I can show this to someone and say:
1. The software can recognize a feather, as long as it looks similar to what it thinks a feather looks like.
2. The software can't recognize a feather if it's never seen a feather like that. It's not a sentient being.
This is good, because most examples focus on point #1 and -- if enough marketing is involved -- don't go enough into point #2.
People read news articles like "X can recognize cats in a picture with Y certainty!" and are quick to assume that this "AI" can make sense of a picture and understand it, when all it does is apply certain methods for a certain use case.
This does a much better job by letting people write (or draw) their own test cases and figure out the limits intuitively.
I can show this to someone and say:
1. The software can recognize a feather, as long as it looks similar to what it thinks a feather looks like.
2. The software can't recognize a feather if it's never seen a feather like that. It's not a sentient being.
This is good, because most examples focus on point #1 and -- if enough marketing is involved -- don't go enough into point #2.
People read news articles like "X can recognize cats in a picture with Y certainty!" and are quick to assume that this "AI" can make sense of a picture and understand it, when all it does is apply certain methods for a certain use case.
This does a much better job by letting people write (or draw) their own test cases and figure out the limits intuitively.