40% of 'AI Startups' in Europe Don't Actually Use AI, Claims Report (forbes.com) 112
Two-fifths of Europe's AI startups do not use any AI programs in their products, according to a report that highlights the hype around the technology. From a report: Out of 2,830 startups in Europe who were classified as being AI companies, only 1,580 accurately fit that description according to the eye-opening stat on page 99 of a new report from MMC, a London-based venture capital firm. The label, which refers to computer systems that can perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, was simply wrong.
"We looked at every company, their materials, their product, the website, and product documents," says David Kelnar, head of research for MMC which has $400 million under management and a portfolio of 34 companies. "In 40% of cases we could find no mention of evidence of AI." In such cases, he added, "companies that people assume and think are AI companies are probably not."
"We looked at every company, their materials, their product, the website, and product documents," says David Kelnar, head of research for MMC which has $400 million under management and a portfolio of 34 companies. "In 40% of cases we could find no mention of evidence of AI." In such cases, he added, "companies that people assume and think are AI companies are probably not."
Coincidentally (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Coincidentally (Score:5, Funny)
Reminds me of a screenshot I saw some days ago:
"If it's written in Python, it's probably machine learning. If it's written in Powerpoint, it's probably AI"
Re:Coincidentally (Score:5, Insightful)
Reminds me of a screenshot I saw some days ago: "If it's written in Python, it's probably machine learning. If it's written in Powerpoint, it's probably AI"
That quote is wrong...it should be, if its in Python, its applied math but is being called machine learning, if its in LISP or Prolog then its probably AI. Actually, no self-respecting CS person uses Python. Python is used by academics from other fields like Physics who then use their field's variant of mathematical analysis and call it AI. Then they turn down a person with an actual CS degree and experience in ML for a data science job because they don't understand some weird jargon that was invented two weeks ago. This is no surprise to me...the entire "Big Data" thing has been a fraud since the beginning and since the bosses have no idea what AI is, they can't tell when they are being conned. And apparently neither can the investors.
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Would it put you in a position where you can write something that can be sold as AI though?
Python gets the work done. I'd like to see a household appliance running on Prolog though.
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Still, you need *something* to show the VCs to attract them. Preferably something more interactive than PowerPoint presentation. So... Python for the rescue!
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if its in LISP or Prolog then its probably AI.
What makes Prolog so special? It's a language based on formal logic, and formal logic is only one aspect of intelligence.
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Re: Missing the point. (Score:1)
You don't know "neural nets" but you know "neural networks"? Do you also not know a cock up your ass but you know an erect penis in there?
Re: Missing the point. (Score:1)
We don't have a cogent definition of I, so AI is even harder to define, apart from the A part. Most of the time, though, people just want stuff that gets the job done cheaply, whatever it might be called, but verifying it is doing the job you think it is doing is not always easy.
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your head
Re:Coincidentally (Score:5, Insightful)
In the outside world, the press and the media and popular culture, AI retains its original meaning: "machines that think like a human." Which is confusing for a lot of people when they hear scientists talking about AI, because strong AI has not been invented, and we have no idea even how to do it. We're missing some fairly important pieces.
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At the same time, AI has come to be used in the tech press and mainstream press to mean "machine learning and related statistical techniques". Obviously this hurts the brains of many of us who still understand AI to mean "strong AI" or the newer moniker, "AGI" (artificial general intelligence), but we sort of have to roll with the language on this one.
Wikipedia insists that machine learning is a subset of AI. OK, sure, I guess that's fine, in that it is one of a series of techniques that can provide reasona
Re:Coincidentally (Score:5, Informative)
AI has come to be used in the tech press and mainstream press to mean "machine learning and related statistical techniques".
It really doesn't. Reporters mostly don't understand the difference between "machine learning" and "strong AI." They also don't understand the difference between "machine learning" and "statistical techniques."
Read articles carefully: often the researcher/company will be saying one thing, and the reporter will hear "strong AI." Then we get that followed with "AI is a danger to humanity." In its current form it's not, and it will take a lot before AI is anywhere near capable of overtaking humanity. And sometimes the researchers encourage the confusion [theguardian.com].
Re: Coincidentally (Score:3)
I didn't say that it does mean that. I said it has come to be used that way. I support some prescriptiveness in language, but I am a realist about technical terms getting broad to the point of meaninglessness when they enter the mainstream. Fighting this is a frustrating and likely pointless endeavour (see: hacker).
Your theory seems to be that writers at TechCrunch think when they say a startup is using "AI" to improve recruiting or the sales process or even to process large volumes of textual data that the
Re: Coincidentally (Score:3)
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How pattern recognition is not part of AI?
It's most likely part of the solution to "how the human brain works," but it is far from the entire solution of general AI. That is why.
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It's also because AI as a concept keeps moving its goalposts as we reach some of them.
If you'd ask a guy from the 80s whether a device qualifies as AI that allows you speak the name of a destination, then leads you there on the optimal way using voice output, he'd say "of course yes". Nowadays we'd just say "durr no that's just Google Maps".
Re: Coincidentally (Score:3)
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Since I had to google it and I still have the tab open:
The Chinese Room Argument [stanford.edu]
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Yes and no. It is USED as a broader term to mean all those things. However, it is deceptive to do so. Marketing departments try to distort existing vocabulary all the time with the intent of attaching current understanding to their very different product.
Artificial Intelligence is one example. The use of the term "ridesharing" by app-based taxi services is another. "Bikeshare and carshare" are short-term bike and car rentals. In fact, the entire "sharing" economy is actually just "short term rentals" or "se
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No, AI is a term that is broadly misapplied to include ML, NLP, ES, etc. Currently, there is no AI.
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AAI (Score:2)
Artificial Artificial Intelligence. It's the new genuine simulated leather.
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Indeed. The whole term "AI" is a marketing lie. It has gotten to prevalent that researchers are now using "AGI" (Artificial General Intelligence), which essentially means the same thing but has not yet gotten corrupted by the marketing scum.
Incidentally, there is no "learning" in machine learning either. It is just calculating parameters of statistical classifiers from data-sets. Calling that "learning" is about as wrong and dishonest as calling statistical classificators "AI". "Learning" and "AI" both imp
Re: Coincidentally (Score:2)
Well, at least some of those machines are intelligent enough to know ML is AI. That makes them smarter than you.
and the other 60% (Score:1)
also donâ(TM)t use AI
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They were doing god's work then.
Only 40%? (Score:2)
No kidding (Score:5, Insightful)
Claiming that you are an "AI" company is just marketing buzz for most. Last year they would have been "blockchain startups", in 1999 they would have been "internet companies", and in 1960 they would have been somehow worked the word "rocket" into the name. It's been this way forever.
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https://rocketinternetblockcha... [rocketinte...hainai.com]
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And now we sit back and wait for "AI-powered" crawlers to automatically register this stupid-as-fuck domain name.
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Nobody. The acronym sucks.
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Yep, but you know how it is.
Investor have read about it in some magazine so if you don't claim that your new line of teacup holders uses AI or blockchains or whatever the new buzzword is they will think that you are out of touch with the market and withhold the funding.
Some of them are a bit behind and wants you to do the IoT thingy.
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This year at CES, down in the Eureka area, was a guy sitting in a booth. The curtain behind him had just 3 words, in relatively (1" high) small print..
blockchain
ai
crypto
His booth was actually quite busy. I take this as proof that, if you reach a critical mass of buzzwords, it does not matter WHAT you do, you WILL get funded as Homer Simpson found out [youtube.com]...
Fuzzy Logic (Score:1)
I'm waiting for Fuzzy Logic powered Artificial Intelligence on a Transputer, then we'll be back in 1980.
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It is not the companies claiming to be AI companies. It is analysts (other analysts) to claim companies do AI without evidence (claim by this analysts). So in short: Analysts claim other analysts do not work properly. What else is new?
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I don't even blame the companies. I blame the politicos and their moronic desire to constantly attempt to interfere in the market place. Cleveland for example has "block chain incubator."
So if you are starting a business that does anything with a computer at all; you want to get free money and paraded in from of potential investors well you better find away to include block chain somehow even if that isn't the right tool for the job and if you can;'t manage that you need to work into the marketing literat
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Next thing you are going to tell me is that my yoga pants aren't smart.....
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The marketing scum cannot help themselves. They will corrupt any and all meaning of language if it means they potentially get one more sale.
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but AI would indicate some notion of sentience
No, it wouldn't. It has never been the requirement.
It's probably even worse than that (Score:1)
I suspect MMC, a venture capital firm, doesn't have the expertise or resources to inspect the code, so how would they know that there's something like AI or ML powering the product? The article makes it sound like they simply looked at the company's marketing materials and maybe got a product demo from the marketing team.
Analysts claim analysts are wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Analysts classify start ups to be AI companies while the analysts of the study claim that analysis is wrong, as they could not find evidence of AI used by the companies. The latter analysts also do not provide evidence on what data they come to this conclusion. All analysts do not provide any definition what this AI is and what they counts as AI in their respective studies.
They do not analyze anything properly, they guess, use smoke and cloaks to confuse the audience.
AI has now taken the place of blockchains (Score:2)
for the sweet VC dollars.
What is AI? (Score:3)
This all comes down to the definition of AI; these days, people tend to think the term is synonymous with machine learning, but it isn't nor has it ever been; AI is just about a system that's somehow "artificially intelligent". Rule-based systems and statistical analysis can be AI just as well. Us computer people that understand that simply following some rules is not "intelligent" may think otherwise, but the vast majority of humanity considers these things "intelligent". Any automated system that appears "intelligent" to its users or buyers is AI. By definition.
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No. Just because the marketing people have led non-technical folks to believe that rule-based systems are "intelligent"...doesn't make it so.
Oh, they're using is allright.,. (Score:2)
This Is A Shocker (Score:2)
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let me check my Big Data for answer...
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I'll need some Data Scientists with Data Analytics to check their Dashboards
What does this remioned me of? (Score:2)
It reminds me of the Website bubble where startup got investors to put money into startups that had no product or service.
AAI Startups? (Score:2)
Artificial AI Startups?
More proof so-called 'AI' is mostly marketing hype (Score:2)
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Most startups probably don't even use the "I". (Score:2)
So saying that they don't use the artificial one either isn't news.
And by the way... although this is just a personal pet peeve here, it's actually written as "A.I.", not "AI". It is an abbreviation, not an acronym.
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Most startups probably don't even use the "I".
So saying that they don't use the artificial one either isn't news.
Oh, yes. Recently did a consulting job for an "AI" startup. What we should have told them is "Your idea is shit and anything solid you actually have is 20 years old." They had no clue about the state-of-the-art and were bumbling about incompetently. Surprisingly they had investors.
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And do you also write "N.A.S.A."?
Linear regression (Score:2)
My personal experience with companies that claim to do AI, is that the vast majority of them claim it's AI as soon as they do a linear regression. Which always makes me wonder what they did before they switched to AI.
Lots of reasons for stuff like this (Score:2)
My employer has AI initiatives, but we just engaged in some creative explanations to convince zoning board we are an R&D company so we can move into our new office park.
There are lots of reasons the reporting on these kinds of metrics is fuzzy.
Re:A case of cultural difference more likely (Score:5, Insightful)
The article is about analysts which claim other analysts made a wrong assessment based on data both do not have.
So it is all bullshit. BTW they do not define what they mean by AI.
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