FTC says AI scanner "deceived" users after BBC revelations

bbc.co.uk

19 points1a527dd53 comments

> Under the US consumer watchdog's proposed settlement, Evolv will be banned from making unsupported claims about its products’ ability to detect weapons [...]

Does this mean they were allowed before?? Does a company need to be explicitly banned from making shit up in its marketing material?? Aren't there laws against this??

This is a failure of legal review of marketing materials. Every law school student or philosophy major would classify marketing materials saying their AI system could “identify all weapons” is false. It also leads to basic human instinct of overhype.

Replace 'AI' with 'software' and suddenly a lot of products become less impressive and their claims more obviously sketchy.

The reason 'AI' is even a thing is because it muddles the waters. People want to believe they are buying something "intelligent". But that's just hype. It's all just computers running some kind of software all the way down. No silver bullet. No approach to software development, no matter how memory inefficient, can make the jump they are promising.

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