The last 12 months saw unprecedented international public discourse around all things AI. As part of our year-end wrap-up, this week Synced looks at what ten notable people had to say about artificial intelligence in 2018:

“AI is currently very, very stupid…”

Google Vice President and Cloud AI Head Andrew Moore

Moore continued “…[AI] is really good at doing certain things which our brains can’t handle, but it’s not something we could press to do general-purpose reasoning involving things like analogies or creative thinking or jumping outside the box.” Moore spoke at a Google Cloud event on November 14.

“What’s really important is putting humanity at the center.”

- Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab Director Fei-Fei Li

Li on research priorities at the WIRED25 Summit in San Francisco. “As much as AI is showing its power, it’s a nascent technology…”

“Perhaps we should call this ‘Cargo Cult AI’ or ‘Potemkin AI’ or ‘Wizard-of-Oz AI’. In other words, it’s complete bullsh*t (pardon my French).”

- Facebook VP & Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun

LeCun tweeted in reference to Hanson Robotics’ android Sophia, adding “this is to AI as prestidigitation is to real magic.”

“Artificial intelligence should not look like humans”

- Baidu CEO Robin Li

Speaking at the Smart China Expo, Li said the goal of artificial intelligence is to create capable, smart machines; not androids.

“Stop.”

- HBO’s Westworld series Co-creator Jonathan Nolan

Nolan had just the one word of advice for scientists working toward artificial general intelligence. Westworld is a fictional, Wild-West-themed amusement park where advanced humanoid robots indulge guests’ fantasies.

“AI should be market and economy centric”

- Top AI Scientist and UC Berkeley Professor Michael I. Jordan

Jordan was speaking at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai. “We’re thinking too much about creating artificial intelligence as an image of a human being, We should create artificial intelligence also in the model of market.”

“Should radiologists be worried about their jobs? Breaking news: We can now diagnose pneumonia from chest X-rays better than radiologists.”

- Andrew Ng, co-founder of Coursera and Stanford University professor

Ng referring to Stanford ML’s successful ChexNet pneumonia detection model.

“Data is the new oil, and China is the new Saudi Arabia”

- Kai-Fu Lee, Founder and CEO of Sinovation Ventures and author

Lee made the remark at the Asia Society in New York.

“The day you start dealing with privacy issues, the day you open this data and unveil personal information, you open a Pandora’s Box”

- French President Emmanuel Macron

Macron told Wired he was authorizing the use of French healthcare data in AI systems.

“Short-term AGI Is a serious possibility”

- OpenAI Co-founder and Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever