AI: The pattern is not in the data, it's in the machine

A neural network transforms input, the circles on the left, to output, on the right. How that happens is a transformation of weights, center, which we often confuse for patterns in the data itself. It's a commonplace of artificial intelligence to say that machine learning, which depends on vast amounts of data, functions by finding patterns in data. The phrase, "finding patterns in data," in fact, has been a staple phrase of things such as data mining and knowledge discovery for years now, and it has been assumed that machine learning, and its deep learning variant especially, are just continuing the tradition of finding such patterns. AI programs do, indeed, result in patterns, but, just as "The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves," the fact of those patterns is not something in the data, it is what the AI program makes of the data.