The AI hype-cycle is in full swing. But many of the so call game-changing innovation promoted by AI companies have not actually come to fruition or ended up the way they were promoted. Just take Google Duplex for example - a huge announcement for a digital assistant that could understand natural language and sound like a human speaking. That once consumer-facing could only reserve you a table at some restaurants, some of the time.

Whenever you hear about a supposed success in artificial intelligence. Here's a list of six questions you should ask

• Stripping away the rhetoric, what did the AI system actually do?

• Here to how general is the result. e.g Does an alleged reading task measure all aspects of reading or just a tiny slice of it.?

• Is there a demo where I can try out by examples, be very sceptical if there isn't

• If the researchers or their press people allege that AI system is better than humans, then which humans, and how much better?

• How far does succeeding at the particular task reported in the new research actually take us toward building genuine artificial intelligence?

• How robust is the system?. Could it work just as well as other data sets, without massive amounts of retraining? e.g. Could a game playing machine that mastered chess also play an action-adventure game?. Could a system for reorganising animals correctly identify a creature, if it had never seen before as an animal? Would a driverless car system that was now trained during the day be able to drive at night or in the snow.?