What’s the dumbest mistake you can think of that has been made by artificial intelligence, or AI? You can define dumb in whatever way you like, from obvious to deadly or catastrophic. Just think of a few mistakes, and ask the same question for humanity, or just people you know, or maybe just yourself. How do all those mistakes compare for stupidity?

In recent years, AI has been developing in leaps, bounds, and bigger steps. Through it all, AI has made many stupid mistakes. It still does and will continue for a long time to come. Some mistakes were silly like bad autocorrects. Others were more serious like self-learning from racists dominating conversation in a group without knowing that was wrong, with AI thinking the dominant conversation had to be the prevailing norm that would be sensible to try and emulate the most. You can react however you want to all this, and judge AI negatively all you want, but if you looked at the scope and grandiosity of human mistakes, from silly to catastrophic, current and historic, it would not take you long to realize that AI will never be stupid enough to be human. Indeed, if to err were human, as Alexander Pope so elegantly put it, anyone who believes AI will never be truly human can use this proof to support and reinforce their belief, with AI never being able to err to the extent we do to be so like us.

As for AI being intelligent enough to be human, I am not smart enough to be able to formulate how intelligent I think AI might be able to get. I am only currently smart enough to know how stupid AI won’t be able to become.

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This post is one of 70 quotes I wrote, each with an accompanying essay, in my e-book and paperback Stars I Put in my Sky to Live By, on Amazon or Smashwords (choose your price including free!).