Five minutes into Google’s I/O conference in May, Verge staffers started taking bets on how many times “AI” would be mentioned onstage. It seemed like every presenter had to say it at least once or get stuck with a cattle prod by Sundar Pichai. (In the end, we stopped betting and made a supercut.) Watching WWDC, though, the book ran in the opposite direction: would anyone from Apple mention “AI” at all? It turns out, no, not even once.

The technology was referred to, of course, but always in the form of “machine learning” — a more sedate and technically accurate description. As many working in the field itself will tell you, “artificial intelligence” is a much-hated term: both imprecise and overdetermined, more reminiscent of sci-fi...

Continue reading…