Realities of Overlap
There are two sub-sites of stackexchange.com with overlapping topic space with Artificial Intelligence.
The spread of data-centrism1 throughout multiple Stack Exchange sub-sites should not be surprising given its rise in funding, and some have noted that overlap is inevitable. Still, Franck Dernoncourt and Robert Cartaino expressed concern about this overlap in the past Q&A posts referenced in this question text.
Distinctions
However data intelligence is a subset of smaller proportion in relation to the entire field of artificial intelligence than public media and SE discourse suggest. The flow of funding and actual research is not all public.
Also of note is that others have suggested throughout the Artificial Intelligence Q&A that machine learning is distinct from artificial intelligence. Although there is obvious overlap in the literature and in practice, one can easily argue that point.
- There are things machines learn that to use the term intelligence would be a gross stretch of the meaning of the term
- There are elements of artificial intelligence systems that are deliberately and effectively not mechanical
- There are elements of both biological and artificial systems that have inherited intelligence, DNA based in biology, hard coded learning software, and likely VLSI algorithm realization in the near future
AI Foundations Rest in Theory and Action Rather Than Data
The foundation of AI is not data-centrism but rather cybernetics, kick started by cold war funding of ICBM countermeasures under Reagan. Concurrent with data-centrism is the serious investment into real time embedded AI for transportation, factory defect reduction, and smart home robotics.
Automated mathematics (Leibniz) is also well funded & lacks data in the conventional sense.
In the (by far) most popular answer on this topic, Robert Cartaino wrote,
"With autonomous cars, smart surveillance, and 'the next big thing' capturing the headlines, this isn't a terrible idea for a subject. Draping it in the popular AI label gives it a better focus, and it completely disambiguate[s] that this is not a technical implementation or programming site. We already have that."
Possible Shift May be Indicated
For the above reasons and the plethora of truly distinctive questions dating to the initial proposal of this site2, it is important to also list the following categorically different (and therefore probably unpopular) possible direction in the site description.
Artificial Intelligence Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for ...
people interested in embedded, mathematical, cognitive, and discovery centered artificial intelligence research and development.
There would be much less overlap and, in case the data-centrism craze dies down, which many in the absence of any historical perspective assume would never occur, this AI sub-site would have much stronger long term viability.
Footnote
[1] Data-centrism, the belief that in data lies the truth, strongly supported by statistics and probability and criticized as pointing human activity randomly and without progressive objective, is increasingly the dominant perspective of the cultures of developed regions. Success with mining, ranking, and indexing and the power that practitioners such as Google Inc. have gained globally through the realization of what was once a card catalog in the local library drive this philosophic paradigm shift.
[2] An example of one of the many early questions that are not data-centric but classical and of enduring importance to the development of artificial intelligence is this one from the proposal phase of the AI sub-site: Is the Turing Test, or any of its variants, a reliable test of artificial intelligence?