AI and The Consciousness Gap

AI means a lot of things to a lot of people. Usually what it means is not very well thought out. It is felt, it is intuited. It is either adored, worshipped or deemed blasphemous, profane, to be feared. In this article, I explore what society at large really means by artificial intelligence as opposed to what researchers or computer scientists mean. I want to clarify for the non-technical audience what can realistically be expected from AI, and more importantly, what is just unrealistic pie-in-the-sky speculation.