Narayanan: The key distinction that we make is between predictive AI and generative AI. In our view, most of the snake oil is concentrated in predictive AI. When we say snake oil, it’s an AI that doesn’t work at all — not just an AI that doesn’t live up to its hype; there’s certainly some of that going on in generative AI.

You have AI hiring tools, for instance, which screen people based on questions like, “Do you keep your desk clean?” or by analyzing their facial expressions and voice. There’s no basis to believe that kind of prediction has any statistical validity at all. There have been zero studies of these tools, because researchers don’t have access and companies are not publishing their data.