There’s a very good article by John Naughton, professor of the public understanding of technology at the Open University, in The Guardian (for whom he writes regularly). He highlights the way that tech has followed other examples in history of using one label – for something perceived as ‘good’ – to describe a different thing, which may be perceived to be, or actually be, ‘bad’ or at least not ideal or not what we think it is.
He highlights how machine learning is now almost always referred to as AI. Now machine learning is definitely not artificial intelligence but whether by laziness or something more pernicious that is the label now used and the tech companies do not object and in fact amplify it.
Our feeling that AI may generally work for good, allows all the social and environmental damage of machine learning to go unchallenged and allows the continued economic exploitation of tech users through the data usage that machine learning manipulates.
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