While acknowledging the potential of some AI, AI Snake Oil uncovers misleading claims about the capabilities of AI and describes the serious harms AI is already causing in how it’s being built, marketed and used in areas such as education, medicine, hiring, banking, insurance and criminal justice.

In 1961, Donald Michie, a British WWII code breaker and a researcher in artificial intelligence, developed MENACE (the Machine Educable Noughts And Crosses Engine), one of the first programs capable of learning to play and win a game of Noughts and Crosses (or Tic-Tac-Toe if you’re American.) Since he had no computers at his disposal at the time, he created a device built out of matchboxes and glass beads to simulate a learning algorithm.