I work in healthcare and have been exposed to and use practically both AI and Machine Learning (both of which are being used two things which are used somewhat interchangeably, but are different. (If you are interested in how it can be used constructively, I can expand on my experience)
AI isn’t data mining, although it (and machine learning) can absolutely (and are) be used for data mining. For example, the proliferation of digital data in Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) could be mined using these technologies in tandem to find links between things that are beyond the ken of human perception to see. Because our medical data is now more digital (with ALL the good AND BAD things that go along with it) instead of physically written, it lends itself to this type of analysis. I am making this up, but using these tools could discover a link between the age of onset of nearsightedness and a susceptibility to kidney stones. Point is, no human is likely to ever look for a relationship between nearsightedness and kidney stones, but machines with AI and Machine Learning whose main requirement is a sufficient amount of data to examine, would see it where no human would.
I do believe there is some truth in your comment about “applying a label to make themselves look novel”.
AI uses algorithms to mimic the human cognitive process, and machine learning uses the analysis of data to find patterns, and automatically incorporates it to improve the ability to analyze the data.
Both can be quite powerful and useful.
And quite dangerous.
I view these tools in the understanding that most things have a duality to them. They can be used for good or evil, in the same way a simple claw hammer could be used to build a beautiful coffee table, or to bash someone’s brains in and murder them.
And I no longer trust mankind to use tools like these responsibly and constructively. While it is true that in the case of AI and Machine Learning there may be many beneficial things that will come from it, in the hands of Communist China, a non-Constitutionally guided US Government, Google, and any number of other bad actors, it has the potential to be extraordinarily destructive to both our liberties and our lives.
And indications are, it is full recognized by those entities for its potential for abuse, and is being tirelessly exploited for these nefarious purposes.
God help us.
I understand.
My field is GIS and my experience is similar to yours. We would look for relationships between various spatial phenomena, exploring the possibilities of cause and effect relationships between them.
What you describe sounds similar to that science except that with the power of modern data processing, far more databases can be compared automatically in far less time and the new information (results) might become evident that might never (?) have been considered possible.
It still looks like “data mining” to me - on steroids.
We were toying around with neural networks and data marts 20 years ago. AI sounds like a steps ahead of those two efforts.
Thank you for your reply to me. I really appreciate it.