I think this bubble's a weird one in that it's a very different size depending on your point of view. Everything is getting rebranded as AI. Taking averages, grouped by something? That's AI now. Using algorithms to do different things for different people? That's AI now. At least it will be in your press coverage.
One thing is AI to the press and public, another thing is AI to investors, yet another thing for nontechnical workers, and not even a single cohesive thing to people building it all. Wherever you personally draw your lines between AI and not AI, the boundaries do keep expanding. Does that mean the bubble is growing? There are undoubtably more people doing machine learning, and there are more people doing statistics, and more people solving optimization problems, and each other thing that we call AI, but the "AI" label is growing faster than all that. It's a weird bubble. If it pops, does that mean there will be fewer jobs for people like me, or does it just mean people will just stop calling it AI? Or is this just a word's meaning changing and not a large bubble?
One thing is AI to the press and public, another thing is AI to investors, yet another thing for nontechnical workers, and not even a single cohesive thing to people building it all. Wherever you personally draw your lines between AI and not AI, the boundaries do keep expanding. Does that mean the bubble is growing? There are undoubtably more people doing machine learning, and there are more people doing statistics, and more people solving optimization problems, and each other thing that we call AI, but the "AI" label is growing faster than all that. It's a weird bubble. If it pops, does that mean there will be fewer jobs for people like me, or does it just mean people will just stop calling it AI? Or is this just a word's meaning changing and not a large bubble?
This story comes to mind: http://web.archive.org/web/20190626012618/https://gen.medium...