Great stuff. I would add limiting teacher and student use of AI in schools and universities. We are already at the point at universities where students can use AI for writing and coding, and staff can grade it with AI. Humans are optional. It’s just two groups of computers talking to each other. Where is the learning in that? I just hope my doctor wasn’t taught at an AI university!
Thank you, Julian, for this important contribution. I have used the term "Artificial stupidity" since the early 2000. I also often state that most of what we call AI is actually IA: intelligent algorithms. I agree with Harari that AI should be read as Alien Intelligence. The important point for me is that AS/AI/IA is not the problem; the problem is a flawed socio-economic system. The system I am talking about is the supply system that should meet our needs (the needs of all) while safeguarding the Earth's life-support system (ELSS) on which the welfare of all current and future human and non-human life on Earth depends on. We have made the mistake to establish a global game called economy (a Monopoly) as an overlay on this supply system. In this game, utilizing what is called AI can benefit a few for some time. And these few don't care that they destroy the supply system and the playing field (the ELSS). Unfortunately, in this game, those who are in a winning position can change the rules. While the rule changes you propose make sense, are almost mandatory to avoid disaster and collapse, and would be extremely beneficiary, the current winners in the global Monopoly called Economy will easily prevent the rule changes you propose from being implemented.
Such a fascinating and important perspective. I appreciate how you shift the conversation away from the familiar fear of superintelligent AI and toward a much more immediate risk: the gradual atrophy of human judgment when decision-making is increasingly outsourced to machines. The concept of “artificial stupidity” is provocative, but it highlights a real challenge that extends far beyond AI itself, whether in medicine, aviation, education, or finance, automation can create a false sense of security that weakens the very skills needed when systems fail.
One aspect I would be interested in exploring further is whether deliberately introducing friction or uncertainty into AI systems is the optimal solution, or whether the better approach is designing workflows that actively preserve human expertise through continuous engagement, training, and accountability. The challenge is maintaining vigilance without sacrificing the efficiency and accuracy that make these tools valuable in the first place.
Regardless, this article raises a question that deserves far more attention: how do we ensure that technological progress enhances human wisdom rather than replacing it?
Thank you for a thoughtful contribution to a debate that will only become more relevant in the years ahead…
Brilliant analysis, as always. Reality is presented warts and all. How can we start to address this totality from within though? Perhaps we need to create a ...God? Who intervenes in our helplessness. It has worked in the past.
I sometimes look at the spiritual certainty and lack of ...progress? in the Middle Ages, when belief in a God constrained humanity and suspect that is where a greatly reduced population will end up. But I am not certain that means that it worked as an approach.
In that case it will happen when the money evaporates - as it probably will do shortly, since it does not actually exist outside the human imagination.
Succinct and excellent. Covers the lunacy of efficiency replacing workers and tanking the consumption economy, ultimately unsustainable anyhow. AI and Iran greatly expedite collapse, and the energy and water use are deadly. The competition with agriculture with farm bankruptcies already soaring are going to create famine at a scale never seen before.
I keep hearing the term „human rights“! Not sure when I saw the last time the counterpoint „human responsibility“.
Our human rights are steadily unraveling ecosystems we don’t understand; and perhaps more importantly - they make us to a little detail: these ecosystems are not there for us to abuse or exploit, they are our life line.
I rather like the idea of 100% income tax on anyone who has more than $100m. No human needs more than that. Billionaires are a waste of space. But the rest of society needs schools, hospitals, aged care, roads etc.
Amen. And let’s encourage an ideology that promotes an understanding of the fractal, not the linear, an appreciation of what “enough” means, and how elegant it would be to cease to exploit, dominate, and abuse the living Earth
I agree! Put simply, as it now stands, AI is a WMD. It behaves more like a viral pandemic than an instantaneous thermonuclear explosion, but its ongoing individual and global effects are ultimately the same -- mass death and dying, civilization collapse, eco-catastrophe, and systemic extermination.
But, thermonuclear WMD energy is the same energy that, properly understood and applied, could alternatively lead to fossil fuel energy becoming irrelevant, archaic, and parked in history behind us. In the same manner, scientific and technological emergence and exploitation of digital and quantum computing for weaponization is a worldwide reality -- its primary application, in fact, ranging from full-scale artillery and armament for military purposes to mass surveillance, semiotic behavioral engineering -- only God and the Silicon Valley broligarchs know what else.
Also like nuclear energy, however, digital and quantum computing -- given better architectural foundation with leadership and application guided by rational and ethical principles with moral values and integrity -- could also yield a world in which warfare, greed, and tyranny are obsolete and humanity's well-being in resonant harmony and synchrony with the natural order of reality may be secured and assured in perpetuity.
I've spent 40 years watching AI evolve, spiraling toward existential annihilation, now to end up as a threat multiplier across all seven areas of the 'Existential Nexus' identified by the Builletin of the Atomic Scientists in 2018 (https://thebulletin.org/2018/11/special-issue-existential-nexus/). I've known what was wrong from the beginning, and I've known all along what the right path is that would've, could've, and should've been taken -- but wasn't and isn't.
I've written a lot about AI on my *Lifesigns Earth* Substack. Last month's May 9 post, "The Road Not Taken," explains this perspective (https://terryrankin.substack.com/p/the-road-not-taken). I'm available to converse about this on request (including video interviews), with anyone who may be interested -- contact me via the Substack site.
Great stuff. I would add limiting teacher and student use of AI in schools and universities. We are already at the point at universities where students can use AI for writing and coding, and staff can grade it with AI. Humans are optional. It’s just two groups of computers talking to each other. Where is the learning in that? I just hope my doctor wasn’t taught at an AI university!
Thank you, Julian, for this important contribution. I have used the term "Artificial stupidity" since the early 2000. I also often state that most of what we call AI is actually IA: intelligent algorithms. I agree with Harari that AI should be read as Alien Intelligence. The important point for me is that AS/AI/IA is not the problem; the problem is a flawed socio-economic system. The system I am talking about is the supply system that should meet our needs (the needs of all) while safeguarding the Earth's life-support system (ELSS) on which the welfare of all current and future human and non-human life on Earth depends on. We have made the mistake to establish a global game called economy (a Monopoly) as an overlay on this supply system. In this game, utilizing what is called AI can benefit a few for some time. And these few don't care that they destroy the supply system and the playing field (the ELSS). Unfortunately, in this game, those who are in a winning position can change the rules. While the rule changes you propose make sense, are almost mandatory to avoid disaster and collapse, and would be extremely beneficiary, the current winners in the global Monopoly called Economy will easily prevent the rule changes you propose from being implemented.
Such a fascinating and important perspective. I appreciate how you shift the conversation away from the familiar fear of superintelligent AI and toward a much more immediate risk: the gradual atrophy of human judgment when decision-making is increasingly outsourced to machines. The concept of “artificial stupidity” is provocative, but it highlights a real challenge that extends far beyond AI itself, whether in medicine, aviation, education, or finance, automation can create a false sense of security that weakens the very skills needed when systems fail.
One aspect I would be interested in exploring further is whether deliberately introducing friction or uncertainty into AI systems is the optimal solution, or whether the better approach is designing workflows that actively preserve human expertise through continuous engagement, training, and accountability. The challenge is maintaining vigilance without sacrificing the efficiency and accuracy that make these tools valuable in the first place.
Regardless, this article raises a question that deserves far more attention: how do we ensure that technological progress enhances human wisdom rather than replacing it?
Thank you for a thoughtful contribution to a debate that will only become more relevant in the years ahead…
Brilliant analysis, as always. Reality is presented warts and all. How can we start to address this totality from within though? Perhaps we need to create a ...God? Who intervenes in our helplessness. It has worked in the past.
Has it worked?
I sometimes look at the spiritual certainty and lack of ...progress? in the Middle Ages, when belief in a God constrained humanity and suspect that is where a greatly reduced population will end up. But I am not certain that means that it worked as an approach.
Corporations, religions and nations were created out of the same impulse, for the few to exploit and control the many.
You may have seen that Anthropic AI proposed a freeze on all development in AI today, so long as all competitors agreed to the same action.
Outstanding analysis, as ever. I'm running out of epithets to praise your posts. Each one reveals yet another facet of the meta-crisis.
That's my self-assigned job. I owe it to my grandkids, who will inherit the mess we are creating.
Sadly it won’t happen it’s all about the money 💰🤷🏼♂️
In that case it will happen when the money evaporates - as it probably will do shortly, since it does not actually exist outside the human imagination.
Succinct and excellent. Covers the lunacy of efficiency replacing workers and tanking the consumption economy, ultimately unsustainable anyhow. AI and Iran greatly expedite collapse, and the energy and water use are deadly. The competition with agriculture with farm bankruptcies already soaring are going to create famine at a scale never seen before.
The relationship between wealth creator and wealth consumer has been the fundamental symmetry behind the real economy since the stone age
#3 is a capital idea!
I keep hearing the term „human rights“! Not sure when I saw the last time the counterpoint „human responsibility“.
Our human rights are steadily unraveling ecosystems we don’t understand; and perhaps more importantly - they make us to a little detail: these ecosystems are not there for us to abuse or exploit, they are our life line.
A ban on profit itself would be a good start!
I rather like the idea of 100% income tax on anyone who has more than $100m. No human needs more than that. Billionaires are a waste of space. But the rest of society needs schools, hospitals, aged care, roads etc.
Amen. And let’s encourage an ideology that promotes an understanding of the fractal, not the linear, an appreciation of what “enough” means, and how elegant it would be to cease to exploit, dominate, and abuse the living Earth
Points well-taken and well-made, Julian!
I agree! Put simply, as it now stands, AI is a WMD. It behaves more like a viral pandemic than an instantaneous thermonuclear explosion, but its ongoing individual and global effects are ultimately the same -- mass death and dying, civilization collapse, eco-catastrophe, and systemic extermination.
But, thermonuclear WMD energy is the same energy that, properly understood and applied, could alternatively lead to fossil fuel energy becoming irrelevant, archaic, and parked in history behind us. In the same manner, scientific and technological emergence and exploitation of digital and quantum computing for weaponization is a worldwide reality -- its primary application, in fact, ranging from full-scale artillery and armament for military purposes to mass surveillance, semiotic behavioral engineering -- only God and the Silicon Valley broligarchs know what else.
Also like nuclear energy, however, digital and quantum computing -- given better architectural foundation with leadership and application guided by rational and ethical principles with moral values and integrity -- could also yield a world in which warfare, greed, and tyranny are obsolete and humanity's well-being in resonant harmony and synchrony with the natural order of reality may be secured and assured in perpetuity.
I've spent 40 years watching AI evolve, spiraling toward existential annihilation, now to end up as a threat multiplier across all seven areas of the 'Existential Nexus' identified by the Builletin of the Atomic Scientists in 2018 (https://thebulletin.org/2018/11/special-issue-existential-nexus/). I've known what was wrong from the beginning, and I've known all along what the right path is that would've, could've, and should've been taken -- but wasn't and isn't.
I've written a lot about AI on my *Lifesigns Earth* Substack. Last month's May 9 post, "The Road Not Taken," explains this perspective (https://terryrankin.substack.com/p/the-road-not-taken). I'm available to converse about this on request (including video interviews), with anyone who may be interested -- contact me via the Substack site.