Artificial Intelligence: Marketing Buzzword, or Reality?

One of the first key takeaways from Vanderbilt Law School’s conference on Thursday about artificial intelligence is that the term doesn’t carry much value in the scientific community.

“A.I. is whatever we can’t do this year,” David Lewis, a speaker who holds a PhD in computer science, said in between panel sessions.

Lewis estimated we’re currently experiencing the second or third wave of “A.I. hype,” in which everyone uses the term to describe their technology. That’s happened before, he said, and then it went out of style as a marketing buzzword. “By 2020, it’ll have a negative connotation again,” he predicted.

Still, ...