Yeah it often times is hugely trial and error. And massively āblack boxā in that the engineers may not even be fully aware of the ins and outs of the algorithm.
I agree with you on the auto use case. Id love to see it. Itās such an under utilised technology.
In the AI ecosystem, what to say about in Finance? 
For example, HFT, algo predictions/models, robo-advisingā¦
I know that incumbent banks are updating/creating their databases, to evaluate their risk assessment of their clients (credit risk), risk models (VaR, CVaR, liquidity risk, market risk, climate risk, etc). And to invest in financial markets, they are retrieving truck loads of information from several areas with Data Mining and Big Data.
Cathie Wood said recently that genomic stonks are going to be the next FAANGs. Now everybodyās crazy about them. Ark has a genomic ETF - ARK-G. Up 30% this month.
But why is what I want to know. Iāve literally seen nothing in the news about genomics taking off, or any of my old sciencey colleagues posting anything particularly genomics related on LinkedIn or anything like that. I wonder is it just speculation in the stonk world.
ING are big into this kind of stuff. Iām always seeing job postings for Machine Learning engineers on LinkedIn for them. Not really my space but I could see the benefit in understanding your customers and making automated decisions etc
You can see several AI/Big Data companies in the CIAās venture capital company portfolio:
I didnāt even know it existed until you mentioned it. 
āGoogle Earthā was a company that CIA invest in before it was sold to Google.
Peter Thielās Palantir is also 1 of the horses on the CIA stable.
Some companies are involved on cybersecurity/cyberwar. That is one of the trends that I think is a growing trend in recent years. With more digitization of our lives, the cybersecurity, cyberterrorism and cyberwar are the new normal.
See the ālastā cyberattacks on US public infrastructures, including utilities, nuclear facilities.
The European countries seems that are better, no news about cyberattacks. 
Iām waiting for boston dynamics to strap some 50ācal machine guns to the top.
First they start out saying āhey look, our robot can hold a drillā - then next comes the robot warfare and itās suddenly holding a 50ācal sniper lol. Or maybe Iāve watched terminator too much. 
There are already drones in combat, some controlled by humans and others self-sufficient (smaller ones, that work in swarms of drones).
And also US war robots (prototypes) tested in combat.
I saw the other day Hyundai is buying them.
What? Hyundai is buying them out ? No way :o
I thought they were just going to push on as their own entity.
Apparently the deal is mid 2021 for a billion dollars for 80% stake, Boston keeps 20% and gets to keep doing itās thing.
I think itās a good deal on Hyundai side so much potential. I was reading itās not just the obvious manufacturing robots for cars etc or the warehouse stock automation but human robotics like mech suits and helping disabilities and assistance.
And Boston well a billion dollars for the effort, and they can keep playing with a nice budget pot.
I heard Softbank bought them and are selling them to Hyundai for a serious amount of cash. Over a billion dollars. Nuts money.
Iām going to steer clear of Chinese stocks in 2021 I think, will review that late June.
Recently entered BA. CWR and GSK. I see them a good mix of growth and recovery plays. Still holding on to Pint, think that will have some good growth in the short term along with MWE.
A bit off topic but slightly on topic, I started rewatching the matrix tonight; Iām suddenly not too sure about this AI 
We wonāt see true/hard AI in our lifetime so donāt worry about Matrix-like issues any time soon.
I agree. That being said, there are plenty of people far smarter and more experienced than I who seem to think we will solve the problem of intelligence in the next 50 years. This likely isnāt going to translate to an Agent Smith type character though, probably just a humanoid chat bot.
Jamie Metzl was also on Joe Rogan, so that interview might give an idea.
p.s. Also Walter Isaacson is going to drop a book about this topic in March 2021:
Housing Market is going to crash once April rolls around.
US I think will crash but depends on how much more the Market can go up before Americans start pulling out when the money dries up.