Speculating on the future of ML interpretability

I’m used to hearing the metaphor of this period being the “Wild West of AI”, or worse, an “AI Gold Rush!” It conjures images of an unexplored and untamed territory being eagerly conquered, or worse, civilized. Yet, in the 19th century, the United States western areas were not too different from other regions on the planet and had already been inhabited by Native Americans for millennia, so the metaphor doesn’t quite work. Predicting with the accuracy and confidence that we can achieve with ML would spook our ancestors and is not a “natural” position for us humans. It’s more akin to flying than exploring unknown land.

The article Toward the Jet Age of machine learning (linked in the Further reading section at the end of this chapter) presents a much more fitting metaphor of AI being like the dawn of aviation. It’s new and exciting, and people still marvel at what...