Idea Fails

Interesting run-down of product flops of the past decade. Particularly dislike the Fake AI stuff that is making its insidious way into everything these days 

AI had a hell of a decade. But lurking in the shadow of its success like a knock-off Gooci handbag or a pair of Abibas sneakers was the squalid phenomenon of Fake AI. Companies saw the hype and misunderstanding that surrounded artificial intelligence and thought to themselves: “A-ha, we can sell that.” They produced AI toothbrushes, AI smart beds, AI alarm clocks and dishwashers, promising that “advanced machine learning algorithms” would adapt to the problems in our life, while cranking out the same old products relying on IF/OR functions. In short: they sold a lot of tat.

A lot sadder news was about the genetic testing for risk of certain diseases and how trusted the results only to be told it was not quite so set in stone as they had been lead to believe. Over the years, I have learned to be very skeptical about research findings that are published as some kind of break-through. Give it a few years and something that finds the exact opposite will emerge. Likely neither of them are the truth but the research machinery has to spin along and produce papers in some cadence to stay funded. Needless to say, cooking data to support a position is no rocket-science so there is nothing to believe there either.