In quite possibly my only point of agreement with Noam Chomsky, I think our discussions of AI are impoverished because they turn on a distinction of language not of fact.  Machines that can "think" are AI, machines that can do impressive calculations but not "think" are just impressive calculators.  This is not a statement about AI, this is a statement about the English word "think".  It sheds about as much light as asking whether an aircraft carrier can swim.  (I am informed that aircraft carriers do indeed swim... in Russian.)<p>A lot of the other "Oh, that's just a cheap trick" non-AI things are a) much more useful to humans than the sci-fi notions people think of when they think AI and b) actually exist in the status quo.  For example, if I told you that there exists a program which can make evidence-based judgments of a human's character to tell you whether they are likely to be trustworthy or not in their future business dealings, you would probably say "Egads!  That is clearly AI!  Holy cow, that is lightyears ahead of passing the Turing Test, and we're nowhere near passing the Turing Test!"<p>But if I told you "The program is called a FICO score" then, pfft, that isn't AI, that's just clever math and good selection of data sources.<p>This is one of the reasons why academic AI is, ahem, pretty dead as a field: after you actually get something working we drum you out of the field.  Telling the topic of a document by reading it and understanding what it is about?  AI!  Leveraging anchor text on the link graph to do the work for you?  Boooooooring.  Granted, billion dollar business boring but still boooooooooring.