AI Myths

Whether it's claims about AI revolutionizing the insurance industry or enabling Orwellian mass surveillance, everyone seems to be talking about 'artificial intelligence' these days. Unfortunately, much of this talk is riddled with myths, misconceptions, and inaccuracies.

The aim of aimyths.org is to help disentangle and debunk some of these misleading ideas. It explores how these ideas appear in the media, and points you towards high quality resources for further reading.

The myths to tackle were chosen in two ways. First, a group of stakeholders from civil society, academia, government and industry discussed the problem of AI bulls**t at RightsCon 2019 in Tunis. Together, we brainstormed a list of the most insidious misconceptions and myths about AI.

Based on this preliminary list, a survey was sent out to allow people to rank these myths, and also to contribute additional ones. A combination of these survey results and additional consultations with the target audience led to the choice of these final 8 topics.

It should be clarified that in no case is there a simple, straightforward refutation of the misconceptions and myths. Rather, the ideas are explored, obvious misconceptions are refuted and more complex perspectives are introduced. The aim of these resources is to guide you towards further materials as presented in the bibliographies and guides at the end of each section.