Post-truth AI and big data epistemology: From the genealogy of artificial intelligence to the nature of data science as a new kind of science

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence has developed from the early Symbolic AI to the present Statistical AI, which has yielded a new kind of science, namely data science. In the present article we first explore the genealogy of AI, and then elucidate fundamental differences between traditional science and data science from different points of view, inter alia, in light of the nature of workflow taken, data collected, knowledge generated, law abstracted, goal pursued, and truth thus reached. And we thereby articulate the fundamental tension between the traditional conception of science and the novel conception of science as exemplified by data science. We finally conclude that truth in data science may be regarded as ‘post-truth’ intrinsically different from truth in traditional science.