Defining AI

The author critiques the definition of AI offered in AI Snake Oil by Narayanan and Kapoor, arguing that its criteria—creative effort, emergent versus directly specified behavior, and autonomy—are nebulous, and that its example of an insurance pricing formula makes the AI/not-AI distinction depend on a system's inner workings that people affected by it cannot see. The author instead proposes understanding AI as a political and ideological project that shifts authority and autonomy away from individuals toward centralized power, rather than as a technological artifact with political features. The post encourages readers to judge any definition of AI by how well it serves their own purposes and to reject the author's framework if it does not.