For people who are less familiar with these terms, how would you define data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence? Because as you mentioned, these are terms that float around a lot in the media and that people absorb, but it’s unclear how they fit together.

It’s a really good question. I’m not even sure if those terms that you referenced are on solid ground themselves.

I’m friends with a venture capitalist who became famous for coining the phrase “machine intelligence,” which is pretty much just the first word of “machine learning” with the second word of “artificial intelligence,” and as far as I can tell is essentially impossible to distinguish between either of those applications.

I would say, again, “data science” is really shifty. If you wanted a pure definition, I would say data science is much closer to statistics. “Machine learning” is much more predictive optimization, and “artificial intelligence” is increasingly hijacked by a bunch of yahoos and Elon Musk types who think robots are going to kill us. I think artificial intelligence has gotten too hot as a term. It has a constant history since the dawn of computing of over-promising and substantially under-delivering.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3825400&forum_id=2#34894088)

I actually think this is going to be a huge point of contention moving forward. I talked to a guy who used to work for one of these companies. Not one of the ones I mentioned, a different one. And one of their shticks was, “Oh, we're going to use social media data to figure out if you're a great credit risk or not.” And people are like, “Oh, are they going to look at my Facebook posts to see whether I've been drinking out late on a Saturday night? Is that going to affect my credit score?”

And I can tell you exactly what happened, and why they actually killed that. It's because with your social media profile, they know your name, they know the name of your friends, and they can tell if you're black or not. They can tell how wealthy you are, they can tell if you're a credit risk. That's the shtick.

And my consistent point of view is that any of these companies should be presumed to be incredibly racist unless presenting you with mountains of evidence otherwise. Anybody that says, “We're an AI company that's making smarter loans”: racist. Absolutely, 100%.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3825400&forum_id=2#34894159)