Artificial Stupidity

Artificial Stupidity (AS - pronounced rudely as you would expect) is an important discipline and I believe a growth area in computer science.

Look at the things we can do with AS:

• Dumb monsters in games
• Automating the news reporting at Fox News
• Anticipating typos or mistakes
• Turning off computers in the cockpits of airplanes that are overshooting airports
• Politicians
• Testing of artificial intelligence
• Thesis committees for AI doctoral candidates
• Better ways to annoy MS Word users with silly assumptions about spelling or formatting automation

Actually there are endless applications for AS. You could do a Turing Test that if the human agreed with the AS, we could confirm the human is a politician, mid level manager, or works for Fox News.

There are many places to learn about AS. For example, NASA. Not the space flight NASA, but the National Artificial Stupidity Association at the University of New Mexico.

Unfortunately this is sot something you can get a degree in. You have to specialize, maybe write a book or make it part of your doctoral thesis (writing one book is the equivalent of 300 blogs or a doctoral degree).

The funny thing is that there are already a lot of AS professionals (or is that AS pirates?). There are a lot of smart folks out there, but some are just plain bad. So, write bas AI, you automatically become an expert in AS.

AS's are everywhere! We have been awaiting self aware machine intelligence, but I think we see AS emerging right now all around us. Look at MS Word and its auto-formatting for wonderful example. Even though a lot of software was designed with traditional techniques and no AI or expert system code. Airline sites that pick only pricey tickets, shopping carts that forget what you bought, most applications have become 'self stupid'.