Well-known AI pioneer Andrew Ng argues that the exaggerated myth surrounding AI distorts its true potential and raises unwarranted fears, even among young people who are worried about their future careers. He separates the amazing reality of today's AI from the science fiction myths and outlines the clear limits and huge opportunities that still await creators.
Resistance to the media myth
In a personal reflection, leading AI expert Andrew Ng described how he received an email from an 18-year-old who feared it was „too late to contribute to the development of artificial intelligence“ because he believed the technology would soon leave people with no meaningful work. Ng saw this as a telling example of how „damaging the myth around AI is“. He publicly criticised claims that AI poses an existential threat to humanity, suggesting that such views are often „inappropriately exaggerated“ by companies to make themselves „appear more powerful“. Expert Andrew Ng warns that this „pernicious“ myth, which contains an element of truth but exaggerates it, makes it difficult for people without a technical background to recognise the technology's true capabilities.
Reality: Amazing, but still „incredibly stupid“
Andrew Ng highlights a fundamental duality of modern AI: it is both „amazingly intelligent“ and „incredibly stupid“ . He points out that it would didn't trust the top LLM itself in solving basic business tasks, such as prioritising your calendar, checking CVs or choosing your lunch - tasks that are normally delegated to junior staff. This reality is borne out by industry reports which state that although the use of AI is expanding, most organisations are still in the experimentation or pilot phase and have not yet scaled up the technology to deliver substantial benefits at an enterprise level. The idea of AI as infallible, objective intelligence is a myth; her performance is largely dependent on the training data and may be as biased as the information she has been given.
Significant limitations and the way forward
The crux of Andrew Ng's argument is that the current limitations of AI are significant, but are often overlooked in media-hyped narratives. Andrew Ng notes that AI remains highly specialised and requires „a lot of customisation“, to perform specific tasks reliably. For example, one of his teams developed a decent AI tool for screening resumes, but it required significant customization. This is consistent with a randomized controlled trial that surprisingly found that Experienced open-source software developers actually took 19 % more time to complete tasks when using AI tools, a significant slowdown that runs counter to the common perception of the productive benefits of AI.
The idea that AI is on the verge of general intelligence is a distant prospect for Ng. He argues that „AI that can perform all the intellectual tasks that humans can... is still decades or more away“. The current state of AI can be better described as „weak AI“ - systems designed for specific tasks without any real knowledge or understanding - while „strong AI“ remains a theoretical concept.
Call to action for developers
Despite the limitations, Andrew Ng is deeply optimistic about the opportunities. He sees the greatest potential not in building base models, but in the application layer, where developers can achieve significant ROI by building on existing models. . He encourages everyone, especially young people, to enter the industry and „learn to build with AI“. This is confirmed by labour market data showing that workers with AI skills have significantly higher wages, which underlines the high value the market places on the ability to work with this technology. The message is clear: ignore the myths, understand the real possibilities and focus on the enormous work of creating valuable applications.
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