paper-with-me

홈 › Papers

No Intelligence Without Statistics: The Invisible Backbone of Artificial Intelligence

2025-10-22 · Ernest Fokoué arxiv

The rapid ascent of artificial intelligence (AI) is often portrayed as a revolution born from computer science and engineering. This narrative, however, obscures a fundamental truth: the theoretical and methodological core of AI is, and has always been, statistical. This paper systematically argues that the field of statistics provides the indispensable foundation for machine learning and modern AI. We deconstruct AI into nine foundational pillars-Inference, Density Estimation, Sequential Learning, Generalization, Representation Learning, Interpretability, Causality, Optimization, and Unification-demonstrating that each is built upon century-old statistical principles. From the inferential frameworks of hypothesis testing and estimation that underpin model evaluation, to the density estimation roots of clustering and generative AI; from the time-series analysis inspiring recurrent networks to the causal models that promise true understanding, we trace an unbroken statistical lineage. While celebrating the computational engines that power modern AI, we contend that statistics provides the brain-the theoretical frameworks, uncertainty quantification, and inferential goals-while computer science provides the brawn-the scalable algorithms and hardware. Recognizing this statistical backbone is not merely an academic exercise, but a necessary step for developing more robust, interpretable, and trustworthy intelligent systems. We issue a call to action for education, research, and practice to re-embrace this statistical foundation. Ignoring these roots risks building a fragile future; embracing them is the path to truly intelligent machines. There is no machine learning without statistical learning; no artificial intelligence without statistical thought.

📄 PDF Abstract BibTeX arXiv:2510.19212

Code (0)

등록된 구현이 없습니다.

Tasks

Representation LearningDensity Estimation

Similar Papers 제목 키워드 기반

Is there a role for statistics in artificial intelligence?

2020-09-13 · Sarah Friedrich, Gerd Antes, Sigrid Behr, Harald Binder 외

The research on and application of artificial intelligence (AI) has triggered a comprehensive scientific, economic, social and political discussion. Here we argue that statistics, as an interdisciplinary scientific field…

Zero-shot Fairness with Invisible Demographics

2021-01-01 · Thomas Kehrenberg, Viktoriia Sharmanska, Myles Scott Bartlett, Novi Quadrianto

In a statistical notion of algorithmic fairness, we partition individuals into groups based on some key demographic factors such as race and gender, and require that some statistics of a classifier be approximately equal…

DisentanglementFairness

Does Artificial Intelligence benefit UK businesses? An empirical study of the impact of AI on productivity

2023-10-06 · Sam Hainsworth

Media hype and technological breakthroughs are fuelling the race to adopt Artificial Intelligence amongst the business community, but is there evidence to suggest this will increase productivity? This paper uses 2015-201…

regression

Abstractions of General Reinforcement Learning

2021-12-26 · Sultan J. Majeed

The field of artificial intelligence (AI) is devoted to the creation of artificial decision-makers that can perform (at least) on par with the human counterparts on a domain of interest. Unlike the agents in traditional …

General Reinforcement Learningreinforcement-learningReinforcement LearningReinforcement Learning (RL)

A Model of Artificial Jagged Intelligence

2026-01-12 · Joshua Gans arxiv

Generative AI systems often display highly uneven performance across tasks that appear ``nearby'': they can be excellent on one prompt and confidently wrong on another with only small changes in wording or context. We ca…