I imagine that many readers interested in the Artificial Intelligence topic are getting used to a very romantic view of the argument. The majority of the articles you may read present anxious questions about a technocratic future generated and managed by AI driven machines. Not at all, but this is the romantic side of the story. Many of us will surely loose their jobs due to "intelligent" machines, quite soon. The production/consumption paradigm is rapidly changing, as society adopts growing levels of robotics.

Do you know what's more dangerous than artificial intelligence? In this article, I will explore natural stupidity in more detail and show how our current technology (driven by narrow artificial intelligence) is making us collectively dumber. We've all had this experience of using a GPS to guide us around an unfamiliar place only to realize later that we have no recollection or ability to get to that place again without the aid of a GPS. Not only is our directional instinct diminished because of lack of use, but so is our own memories. We've all experienced losing our ability to recall due to our over use of Google.

Email me at SteveSlr *at* aol*dot*com (make the obvious substitutions between the asterisks; you don't have to capitalize an email address, I just included the capitals to make clear the logic -- it's my name without a space and without the vowels in "Sailer" that give so many people, especially irate commenters, trouble.) I always appreciate my readers' help, especially monetary. Here's how you can help: First: You can use PayPal (non-tax deductible) by going to the page on my old blog here. PayPal accepts most credit cards. Contributions can be either one-time only, monthly, or annual.

In an acerbic 1976 article on AI research, the computer scientist Drew McDermott was the first to contrast the phrases "artificial intelligence" and "natural stupidity". Four decades later, researchers warn of the threat posed by computer "superintelligence", but stupidity is still a far greater peril: both the age-old natural stupidity of humans and the newfangled artificial stupidity displayed by algorithms – such as chatbots supposed to be able to diagnose illness, or facial-recognition software that throws up false matches for ethnic minorities – in which we place far too much trust. An alternative reason to be cheerful about the coming machine takeover is offered here by the eminent scientist and inventor James Lovelock. A chemist by training, who invented instruments for Mars rovers and helped to discover the depletion of the ozone layer, Lovelock is most celebrated in pop culture for his "Gaia hypothesis". First formulated in the 1960s, it proposes that Earth and its biosphere comprise a single, self-regulating system.

Do you know what's more dangerous than artificial intelligence? In this article, I will explore natural stupidity in more detail and show how our current technology (driven by narrow artificial intelligence) is making us collectively dumber. We've all had this experience of using a GPS to guide us around an unfamiliar place only to realize later that we have no recollection or ability to get to that place again without the aid of a GPS. Not only is our directional instinct diminished because of lack of use, but so is our own memories. We've all experienced losing our ability to recall due to our over use of Google.

Do you know what's more dangerous than artificial intelligence? In this article, I will explore natural stupidity in more detail and show how our current technology (driven by narrow artificial intelligence) is making us collectively dumber. We've all had this experience of using a GPS to guide us around an unfamiliar place only to realize later that we have no recollection or ability to get to that place again without the aid of a GPS. Not only is our directional instinct diminished because of lack of use, but so is our own memories. We've all experienced losing our ability to recall due to our over use of Google.

Do you know what's more dangerous than artificial intelligence? In this article, I will explore natural stupidity in more detail and show how our current technology (driven by narrow artificial intelligence) is making us collectively dumber. We've all had this experience of using a GPS to guide us around an unfamiliar place only to realize later that we have no recollection or ability to get to that place again without the aid of a GPS. Not only is our directional instinct diminish because of lack of use, but so is our own memories. We've all experienced losing our ability to recall due to our over use of Google.

Do you know what's more dangerous than artificial intelligence? In this article, I will explore natural stupidity in more detail and show how our current technology (driven by narrow artificial intelligence) is making us collectively dumber. We've all had this experience of using a GPS to guide us around an unfamiliar place only to realize later that we have no recollection or ability to get to that place again without the aid of a GPS. Not only is our directional instinct diminish because of lack of use, but so is our own memories. We've all experienced losing our ability to recall due to our over use of Google.

In 2012, there was an air of innocence when I took over as the Readers' Editor of this newspaper. Terms such as'accuracy', 'fairness', 'authentic sources', and'verification', and C.P. Scott's dictum "Comment is free, but facts are sacred" did possess a striking potential to keep journalism on the straight and narrow path. Algorithm was a part of mathematics and technology and it had hardly revealed its stranglehold on the information ecology. Artificial intelligence was a footnote. Albert Einstein's wry remark, "Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity," was invoked sometimes to prove a point.