Because if you do, you will believe AI is Actually Intelligent when, in fact, as we have pointed out again and again and again, it is Artificial Idiocy, and the best modern technology only uses AI for thunking, not thinking, as thinking needs to remain the domain of us humans (before X robs us of our ability to use actual words).

Not only is there no AI, but when you type a command, there isn’t even any understanding by the algorithm of what you are asking for when you type a query into an AI tool. NONE. It’s all based on a statistical algorithm that uses pre-computed similarity probabilities to infer what you are asking. That’s not understanding. Not even close.

The Guardian recently published a long read article on Weizenbaum’s nightmares: how the inventor of the first chatbot turned against AI that anyone who is even mildly contemplating an AI tool needs to read. Slowly and carefully. Three times.

Weizenbaum, who was a mathematician, computer scientist, and a student of psychoanalysis, was one of the founders of modern artificial intelligence who not only invented the first chatbot (Eliza), but also built early (mainframe) computers (back when they used vacuum tubes and took up entire rooms) for the University he was studying at, General Electric, and the Navy. In the 1960s, he was part of Project MAC at MIT, a Pentagon program for “machine aided cognition” that perfected time-sharing, created in-system messaging (like instant messaging or early email), and created new tools for word processing.

He was also one of the first to think about the implications of Artificial Intelligence years, if not decades, before anyone else and one of the founders of computer ethics. He was a genius, and when he said that Artificial Intelligence is an “index of the insanity of our world“, he was totally right — and he was right five decades before AI became the buzz-acronym-du-jour. Few people effectively saw that far ahead in technology, so maybe we should sit back and listen. Carefully.

So please take the time to read Weizenbaum’s nightmares: how the inventor of the first chatbot turned against AI and realize that AI is not the answer. Deterministic algorithms developed by smart people that have studied the problem, tested their assumptions, and been consistently proven reliable are the answer. They may be based on machine learning, but machine learning that is expertly selected, tuned, and monitored by validation code that detects when the algorithm is not performing to expectation and interjects a human into the process. Not a multi-layered pseudo-random statistical algorithm that randomly predicts the next seven days worth of orders, starting on Monday, are 210, 198, 307, 250, 185, 250, and 3095 and thinks everything is A-OK even though the store is closed on Sunday.