Artificial stupidity mops up intelligence

It is the great philosophic debate of the computer age: Artificial intelligence — good or evil?

The optimists, some might call them utopians, argue that the computational power of machines — their intelligence — inevitably will become greater than human intelligence.

Intelligence this powerful may be hard to imagine now, but it will be able to solve problems we think are unsolvable. It will improve the lives of humans and ultimately save the species, even if the planet is a goner.

Some AI believers call this mega-intelligence by a godly name — The Singularity.

The dystopians don't disagree that AI might have superhuman intelligence some day, but they think it is irrational and mystical to believe it inevitably will be a force of good.

It could be neutral, like most technology. Or it could be evil. The Singularity could control us dumb humans in nasty ways. Volumes of science fiction play with this nightmare scenario.

Obviously, my natural and wholly organic intelligence is too tiny to really understand any of this, much less have a strong opinion. But there is a third camp, I've discovered, that I am tempted to join. Their great worry isn't artificial intelligence; it's artificial stupidity, or AS.

Everything in my personal history with computers and smart devices leads me to paranoia about AS. It's scarier when you factor in interaction with us featherless bipeds and our limited computational capacities. The logarithm is something like: AS x IQ = hot mess.

As a case study, let's look at a common technological device: the "smart thermostat." In my house, we actually call it the "dumb thermostat."

I read with great interest a story in the Washington Post recently about an important new study in the journal Energy Research and Social Science.

If I may summarize: Most people don't know how to use their programmable (smart) thermostat, use it improperly or have given up trying. Homeowners tend to leave them in the "hold" position, rendering them dumb, not smart.

As I understand it, the smart thermostat is a less complex system than, say, the computers that control nuclear plants and air traffic. Yet interactions between the devices (AS) and their human masters (IQ) succeed little more than half the time.

I waddled through all that and eventually the little screens indicated it was all set to minimize our energy use. The system then did what the screens said — fairly often. Sometimes.

The thermostat's interactions with other members of our homestead were somewhat less successful. Casting no blame at all, the combination of AS and IQ appeared to be less than the sum of the two.

It is possible, as the company's customer service people suggested, that a nefarious Albanian hacker ring had infiltrated our thermostat. But I think it is an AS issue.

I find this ample cause to worry about the future of the species and the planet.

Case Study II: The TV. (I know, I know — there really isn't such a thing as a TV anymore, sadly.)

We begged for the simplest setups and were assured that's what we got. Maybe we did. We didn't even try to program them ourselves.

Bottom line: Most of the time we eventually can watch what we want. But it's always an adventure. The buttons do what the guys said they would most of the time. When they don't, we hit off and on a lot and pray to The Singularity.

Sometimes the DVD player goes on strike for a couple of weeks. I counted, and there are roughly 475 viewing options and enhanced features that I have never considered using.

We only need to bring in the specialists to help a couple times a year; they press the same buttons we do, sometimes for a minute, sometimes for two hours. They said we weren't especially inept IQs.

But AS is mopping the floor with us. And this, too, reaffirms my pessimism.