> He doesn't present an honest understanding of his own field, or the field of neuroscience, or the ongoing developments in the technology surrounding his own business, or its implications.

Yes, but I don't think you are, either.

The fact is that chess and Go abilities aside, we are probably not even close to insect-level intelligence, and we don't have a clear path of getting there soon -- let-alone anything human-level. Current state-of-the-art so-called AI is basically powerful statistical regression algorithms, that are heuristic improvements over core algorithms invented in the 1960s, and there have been few theoretical breakthroughs since then (far fewer than in most other fields), so much so that many consider machine learning to be in the pre-science or pre-theory stage, being mostly about collecting data and trying out heuristics. It's silly to deny recent successes -- largely due to better hardware (although hardware progress is slowing down quickly) -- but we are behind, not ahead, of where we thought, even as recently as the 1990s, we'd be by now.

At this point we have no idea what role statistical regression plays in intelligence or whether we're even in the right direction. That statistics has become synonymous with intelligence (it used to be synonymous with lies) is certainly a cultural phenomenon that is not directly related to our actual knowledge of the field.

That computers perform some mental tasks (certainly more and more of them) better than humans has been a fact of computing since the 50s, and often a cause for wild claims. The invention of neural networks in the 40s and their implementation in digital computers in the 50s led some very respectable people (like Norbert Wiener) to declare that the problem of the brain will be solved in 5 years. The pragmatic Alan Turing thought that was ridiculous and predicted it would take 50. It's been almost 70 years and we haven't yet reached insect-level intelligence or anywhere near a complete understanding of the insect brain, so at this point, any claims that we are on the cusp of something, or starting to believe that our statistical regression algorithms reflect the beginning of intelligence is... misplaced.

On the other hand, it seems like we have not learned the lessons of misplaced confidence in AI, despite our relatively slow progress, and things are worse now as that we actually have some algorithms that are useful in certain restricted domains that we insist on calling AI, thus causing people to use them in domains where they are not only useless but downright harmful. In the meantime, some people draw attention to the dangers of real AI -- which may be anywhere between decades and centuries away (I believe we'll get there some day but we have no idea how or how soon) -- while distracting from the very real and already present dangers of "AI".

Where is the AI that can fold laundry (clothes, linen, towels)? Do laundry (sort, pre-treat, load, unload, clean lint filter)? Do dishes (clear table, scrape food into compost or trash as appropriate, separate to recycling as appropriate, load, unload, put up)? Keep a lawn (mow, edge, trim hedges, move trimmings to compost, trim trees)? Put up Legos after a 5 year old? Pick up around the house and tell you where it placed or last saw an object when queried?

And where is the AI in a humaniform that does all of the above?

There are tentative steps towards some of those activities, but we’re still in the early years with imbuing our machine intelligence models with the equivalent of our kinesthetic sense, object recognition and classification, and natural language interaction. And it is far from clear that we can get there with purely current statistical heuristic-oriented technology. We can only try, but the amount of effort required just for folding clothes to date reminds me of the elaborate Ptolemaic models, or as if we’re trying to build Excel by poking ones and zeroes into memory.

More tinkering required, be back later.

AlphaGo is impressive, but it is an impressive parlor trick not impressive as 'artificial intelligence'

Playing a game with fixed rules and a finite set of potential states is something a computer can do.

Designing the computer that does that is intelligent.

There is no connection between the two and one does not lead to the other.

The fact that some of the people developing 'artificial intelligence' have such a limited understanding of what intelligence is no doubt contributes to the mocking tone of some critics.

I believe there is an alternate reading you may be missing. Viewed in a different light the example of Go you cite is not that different from John Henry vs. the steam engine. The history of industrialization is the replacement of humans by machines for specific tasks. People tend to oversell current AI technology as somehow deviating from that long path. It's a fair point to make.

For me the interesting theme was the exploration of the character and dubious success of the mysterious Jim, who is using his connections to ride a wave of poorly understood and possibly malevolent technology to a grand house in the country and membership in the upper classes--almost like flotsam on the rising tide of economic progress. There's a lot of Gatsby in there and some hints of Graham Greene's quiet American as well. Just as you can argue that AI the technology is part and parcel of industrialization, its social effects recall recurring conflicts in American society and culture that authors like Fitzgerald have been exploring for 150 years.

As for other critiques of the style from the Hackerati I would just say yes, it seems like the work of a young writer. Good writing is hard to achieve and it's typically preceded by a lot of bad writing. To paraphrase Senator Palpatine, we will watch his career with great interest.

Fixed: typo/it really is hard to write well