[nicodds]

I think the writer is overgeneralizing his particular use case. Surely, the situation he represents doesn't need any AI/ML, but it is the result of a simple use case, with little variables and with an easy workflow.

Does the same pattern apply also in more complex scenarios?

[ben509]

Yes and no. AI/ML is real stuff that can do useful things; I worked at a government contracting firm and we made a lot of that stuff work. But as I recall, before anything landed in AI algos, we'd always have pages and pages of code handcrafted by SMEs to prep it. It's not hard to see that, for many cases, all the prep work gets you pretty close to the answer without any training.

I think the issue the article hints at is there are way too many contractors willing to burn your cash on AI/ML.

Contracting has a serious principal agent problem; there was a discussion I recall over how to implement a quick search feature in a system we maintained. I floated the idea of sampling the data to get approximate results, but that was instantly shot down in favor of buying a ton more hardware. There are serious arguments against sampling, it's very tricky to get right, but if we had been spending our own money I think it would have gotten a more careful hearing.