Artificial intelligence is just a math algorithm

It's an oversimplification, but it's a useful one. Here's why.

Hollywood loves to dream up apocalyptic scenarios of artificial intelligence taking over the world. The year 2023 may feel like that year because there is a concerted PR campaign hitting the news already. Aiming to fleece impress investors on Wall Street, several Big Techs firms are rolling out their AI projects with some successes, mixed reviews, and humiliating fails.

We have thought leaders bloviating with glowing predictions, skeptics like me willing to use the tool but see its flaws, and prophets of doom predicting the coming apocalypse at the hands of the World Economic Forum. What a great time to be a writer.

As the presence of AI becomes more obvious in our lives — it was present long before we started hearing about it — it’s urgent we understand an important fact about it. It’s an algorithm. An algorithm is a math formula. That fact has a lot of implications, and I’ll be honest, some are good, and some are quite bad. But it’s a fact that we need to keep reminding ourselves of a…