As if generalized AI and "Super-intelligent AI" were just around the corner. I have bad news for the author, CMOS computer hardware is reaching its ultimate limits at a time when so-called AI is still merely a joke.

The ability to rapidly scan a database of pre-formatted license plates is not the same thing as super-intelligence. Fast processing of simple information has long been an impressive function of electronic computers even back in the analog days and it's part of how they captured the public imagination early on. So adding and subtracting lists of numbers is something that computers can do much faster than a person can. That's not intelligence though. The word "intelligent" itself is fraught with inconsistencies and assumptions.

Facial imaging processing is hyped up as if machines are becoming "aware" of people but this is still just database tricks and it still fails much of the time. The major reason that facial recognition is so dangerous is that false positives happen endlessly. There is no intelligence in such technologies, just tricks that mostly don't work but easily fool gullible audiences when demonstrated in controlled circumstances.

Computers are cool, I'm a geek myself and I use programs like Blender that can do amazing physics simulations which really are jaw-dropping and make for seductive eye candy. Neural networks can do some crazy cool stuff and electronic music was taking the art world in new directions since distortion and synthesizers were first developed. But none of that is intelligence, they're cool tools enabling new experiences and the results are exciting and fun but they're still merely illusions.

I keep telling people, "AI" as its used now is just a corporate buzzword. It's just an algorithm

Yeah, that's right, it's a tool. The tools that are collectively referred to as "AI" are useful and can be used to create some very magical illusions and even achieve some practical goals but so can a water pump or a tank of compressed air. We don't pretend that a water pump is a living creature despite the fact that it can produce effects that mimic the human heart.

I was walking in the hills one day and I kept thinking I was hearing some wild animal hissing at me and it was freaking me out. But after a while, I realized it was a water pipe along the side of the road that had been punctured in places which were making the hissing noises. It's easy to fool people into thinking that inanimate tools are alive because our imaginations are quite active and we're easily misled into thinking that there is an "intelligence" behind phenomena which are strictly mechanical. This is doubly true when someone is trying to convince you that what you're seeing is the result of magic.

This is often discussed in the literature of the colonial era. It was not uncommon for European colonists to terrorize the people with gimmicks designed to trick the local inhabitants into believing they had super powers using simple steam engines, winches, pulleys and other mechanical devices or chemical tricks like fireworks to create magic demons that only they could control. The character Kurtz, in Conrad's Heart of Darkness was one example but there are many instances describing this practice repeated over and over because it was a common ploy centuries ago that is too tempting to let go of. Tell the gullible, naive onlookers that you possess magical powers and they will bow down. The tech aristocracy is trying to use this same strategy to keep the peasants invested in their magical AI powers in a time when they know quite clearly that the well is running dry.

Yes, most tend to confuse current AI tools with future AI and their associated capabilities.

A phd in computer science writes a published journal article with 323 references. Reddit gives him some helpful tips. He must be learning so much in his field from these comments.

Yeah, the self confidence sometimes on Reddit is amazing :)