Is the most important question about AI whether it works or not?

[Nicked from myself on HN.]No.No, it is not.For me, after ~25 years in the skeptics movement, I think the parallels with supplementary, complementary and alternative medicine are most useful.I choose that term intentionally: its initials are S.C.A.M. and that's exactly what it is. As Tim Minchin and Alan Kay both noted, "we have a special term for alternative medicine that's been tested and shown to work. It's called 'medicine'."If it worked, it'd be normal standard clinical medicine. But it doesn't work, and so it isn't.And yet, SCAM is a multi-billion-dollar industry. People have ostensibly official qualifications like "ND", for "naturopathic doctor", even though that person is not a doctor and can't make you better from any kind of illness at all. Colleges teach it, millions use it, and yet, it does not work.Which means we need to ask:1. What does "It works! It's useful!" really mean?2. How do we know it does not in fact work?As a handy example, let's look at homeopathy.Here's a…