Artificial Intelligence is Stupid

People are getting over-intense about artificial intelligence or AI. There is a lot of fear-mongering over lost jobs (which might happen), robot armies (which probably won’t happen), and taking over the world (which most assuredly won’t happen). The big reason? Artificial intelligence isn’t really all that intelligent. In fact, it’s dumber than the rocks it operates in (computers) and however infallible it seems to some it is made by men (and let’s make sure to include women) and men (or women) are imperfect and very, very fallible.

Consider the computer itself. A nice tool, and we can hardly do without them in some instances. But as nice as they are, they still wig out on a regular basis. The “blue screen of death” is common despite improvements in the operating system. Applications won’t run properly sometimes, and we have to keep paying all kinds of money for the next big (hopefully working better) thing. Imperfect men (and women) simply cannot create or make anything that doesn’t have flaws and drawbacks. We are not all-knowing (only one Person has that character trait) and since wisdom (or even smarts) is lacking so are the things we make.

This includes AI. Artificial intelligence is a product of the same fallible men (and women) that build cars that break down, planes that fall apart in the sky, and governments that make mistakes on a regular basis. At best it is another tool to do some work. They do a lot of repetitious work, but the results are only as good as the person operating. The old axiom, “Garbage in, garbage out” was aptly applied when beginning to get work out of computers. I’ve been working with computers since high school (back when dinosaurs were still running around in places other than a movie screen). When I started learning about them and using them it was only about three decades after the room-sized computer ENIAC was invented. At that time they had not even been using transistors very long. ENIAC used thousands of vacuum tubes and the term “bug” was literal bugs getting into the workings and causing parts to fail.

The “bugs” in artificial intelligence are not actual insects maybe, but it is still loaded with them. It is inevitable when considering the works of man. So I don’t fret about AI at all. God is still the only one without bugs, and all of His works are also bug-free. He allows some of man’s works and puts limits on their working, so that all nations will know that He is the Intelligence without artifice that works perfectly all the time.

Shalom, Bruce