Somewhere in 2024 I noticed that "AI" shifted to no longer include "machine learning" and is now closer to "GenAI" but still bigger than that. It was never a strict definition, and was always shifting, but it made a big shift last year to no longer include classical ML. Even fairly technical people recognize the shift.
I’ve worked in this field for 20+ years and as far as I can tell the only consistent colloquial definition of AI is “things lay people are surprised a computer can do right now”
As if anyone in the public cared about marketing for CS research. Hardly anyone is even exposed to it.
AI in the public mind comes from science fiction, and it means the same thing it meant for the past 5+ decades: a machine that presents recognizable characteristics of a thinking person - some story-specific combination of being as smart (or much smarter) than people in a broad (if limited) set of domains and activities, and having the ability (or at least giving impression of it) to autonomously set goals based on its own value system.
That is the "AI" general population experiences - a sci-fi trope, not tech industry marketing.
The scifi AI boom in the 60s follows the AI research boom. This was the original academia hype cycle and one which still scars the public mind via this scifi.
The colloquial definitions have always been more cultural than technical, but it's become more acute recently.
> I think we should shed the idea that AI is a technological artifact with political features and recognize it as a political artifact through and through. AI is an ideological project to shift authority and autonomy away from individuals, towards centralized structures of power.
https://ali-alkhatib.com/blog/defining-ai
