What makes AI click? In which cases can AI never work?
To answer these questions, @randomwalker and I are writing a book on AI Snake Oil. It will be published by @princetonupress We have started a substack to share our thoughts and analysis as we write.
Today, we released a post about how vendors of AI tools do a “bait-and-switch” when they deploy these tools, through 4 case studies: https://aisnakeoil.substack.com/p/the-bait-and-switch-behind-ai-risk
AI Snake Oil
The bait and switch behind AI risk prediction toolsToronto recently used an AI tool to predict when a public beach will be safe. It went horribly awry. The developer claimed the tool achieved over 90% accuracy in predicting when beaches would be safe to swim in. But the tool did much worse: on a majority of the days when the water was in fact unsafe, beaches remained open based on the tool’s assessments. It was less accurate than the previous method of simply testing the water for bacteria each day.
