On the mysteries of artificial intelligence – do we know what we are doing?

Artificial Intelligence has the potential to revolutionise our way of living. We may have self-driving cars in the future and your doctor may be replaced by AI algorithms. The latter is not science fiction anymore. Indeed, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has already approved AI techniques for automated diagnosis without the input of a human clinician. 

Moreover, modern AI research has been likened to alchemy because of its trial and error approach and lack of foundations. Indeed, Ali Rahimi, an award winning researcher at Google, sparked an intense debate in the community when he used the alchemy analogy and criticised the current state-of-the-art AI and machine learning for its lack of fundamental scientific approach. 

We will in this talk discuss the lack of foundations in modern AI, its curious non-human behaviour and the slightly philosophical dilemmas that follow. Finally, we will try to shed some light on the basic question in the AI debate: do we know what we are doing?

Slides