If AlphaZero (which doesn't impact users directly) and Duplex (which isn't released yet) are the best recent examples I can understand why there's negative press appearing.
Duplex's underlying text-to-speech technology research (WaveNet) has produced several papers and is now in public beta. It represents a huge advance in text-to-speech fidelity, using a remarkably straightforward algorithm.
Uh, what? How are users relevant to the question of whether the tech is progressing? Humans at a game with such a high branching factor is a fantastic achievement.
Because A.I. has been sold as revolutionizing peoples lives. The second sentence of the article says Sundar Pichai, claimed in an interview that A.I. “is more profound than, I dunno, electricity or fire.”.
But if people don't see any impact in their lives, from a technology that they are told will change everything, then it's not surprising that they'd think little progress has been made.
If AlphaZero (which doesn't impact users directly) and Duplex (which isn't released yet) are the best recent examples I can understand why there's negative press appearing.