Validating Generalizations about AI and Its Uses

Abstract

Many discussions of the tremendously important topic of AI are undermined by vague definitions of what AI is and by generalizations that are too distant from reality to be useful when pursuing or evaluating real world applications. Inconsistent and exaggerated definitions of AI published during 2019-2022 illustrate the need for an approach to validating current generalizations about AI and its uses and not just repeating decades-old predictions and images based on science fiction movies. Next, this paper presents a series of evaluation issues for generalizations and a series of ideas that are useful for describing AI applications as uses of algorithms based on techniques associated with AI. It incorporates those ideas into summaries of six diverse applications of algorithms associated with AI. A concluding section presents suggestions for realistic descriptions of AI applications and for generalizations about AI.