The title is backwards. It should be that AI models are wrong. Not that a given AI model is a gold standard that human behavior is failing to live up to.
We disabled all ML enabled predictive features when the pandemic began.<p>This has prevented us from the pain of having “bad” unreliable predictions which are worse than having “no” predictions. This saved us a lot of pain in maintainence and debugging.
Most models ("AI" or otherwise) behave very poorly in the situation known a "structural break" [1]. In extreme instances you can even end up with something like Simpsons paradox where the predicted correlation is the opposite of the true correlation [2]. I've had to deal with this exact problem before. The trick is to have a meta model that sits on top and tries to detect when the recent data is highly unlikely to have been produced if the existing model is true. When that happens you flush the older data. This might be what our brains do [3].<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_break" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_break</a>
[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox</a>
[3] <a href="https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/06/predictive-processing-and-perceptual-control/" rel="nofollow">https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/06/predictive-processing-...</a>
As others have noted, the models don't represent the way things are anymore. And bring frank,I don't they'll represent things ever again. I very much doubt that the models will be a good match for behaviors going forward as people are likely going to have a hard, long transition towards normalcy
It seems a fundamental nature of the universe that there is a tension between continuum and discrete. You see it everywhere:<p>Wave vs particle, gradual heating vs phase change, but also soup with little chunks of meat (themselves smaller continuum), gas clouds coalescing into planets. It goes on and on.<p>In this case model was built for the continuum and in came a big discrete shock. Something it wasn't built for. Shocks require a different modality of thought. More reasoning, logic-y than regression.