Accuracy Fallacy: The Media's Coverage of AI Is Bogus - Predictive Analytics Times - machine learning & data science news

A shorter version of this article was originally published by Scientific American. With articles like these, the press will have you believe that machine learning can reliably predict whether you're gay, whether you'll develop psychosis, whether you'll have a heart attack, and whether you're a criminal – as well as other ambitious predictions such as when you'll die and whether your unpublished book will be a bestseller. Machine learning can't confidently tell such things about each individual. In most cases, these things are simply too difficult to predict with certainty. Researchers report high "accuracy," but then later reveal – buried within the details of a technical paper – that they were actually misusing the word "accuracy" to mean another measure of performance related to accuracy but in actuality not nearly as impressive.