Column: The artificial intelligence field is infected with hype. Here's how not to get duped

The star of the show at Tesla's annual "AI Day" (for "artificial intelligence") on Sept. 30 was a humanoid robot introduced by Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk as "Optimus." The robot could walk, if gingerly, and perform a few repetitive mechanical tasks such as waving its arms and wielding a watering can over plant boxes. The demo was greeted enthusiastically by the several hundred engineers in the audience, many of whom hoped to land a job with Tesla. "This means a future of abundance," Musk proclaimed from the stage. "A future where there is no poverty. We still don't have a learning paradigm that allows machines to learn how the world works, like human and many non-human babies do. Robotics experts watching remotely were less impressed. "Not mind-blowing" was the sober judgment of Christian Hubicki of Florida State University. Some AI experts were even less charitable. "The event was quite the dud," Ben Shneiderman of the University of Maryland told me. Among other shortcomings, Musk failed to articulate a coherent use case for the robot -- that is, what would it do? You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. To Shneiderman and others in the AI field, the Tesla demo embodied some of the worst qualities of AI hype; its reduction to humanoid characters, its exorbitant promises, its promotion by self-interested entrepreneurs and its suggestion that AI systems or devices can function autonomously, without human guidance, to achieve results that outmatch human capacities. "When news articles uncritically repeat PR statements, overuse images of robots, attribute agency to AI tools, or downplay their limitations, they mislead and misinform readers about the potential and limitations of AI," Sayash Kapoor and Arvind Narayanan wrote in a checklist of AI reporting pitfalls posted online the very day of the Tesla demo. "When we talk about AI," Kapoor says, "we tend to say things like'AI is doing X -- artificial intelligence is grading your homework,' for instance.