Welcome to the age of artificial stupidity (AS)...

 Warner Brothers movie poster
from a 2001 movie directed
by Steven Spielberg (Wikipedia)

Written by Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTribune/9-6-25

I’m so glad artificial intelligence has arrived on the scene. It explains a lot about my own life.

I realize now that whatever intelligence might be ascribed to me has been artificial all along. Plus, for everything there is an opposite, right? So, if there is artificial intelligence (often referred to as AI) there has to be artificial stupidity (AS). You know, like black-white, hot-cold, sick-well, etc.

What a relief that is. Whenever you feel stupid — and who doesn’t sometimes? — or do something stupid (politicians included), now you can say it’s just artificial stupidity and get on with your stupid life.

Many years ago, I wrote a column about hockey, titled “The Game of Hockey Is a Lot Like Life — Stupid.” This was back when I was a hockey dad, probably he dumbest — make that stupidest — hockey dad in the bleachers watching the games. In short, I’d never taken an interest in hockey so I knew nothing about the rules of the game when I was thrust into the vortex of youth hockey in Northern Minnesota.

Here are some excerpts from that hockey column, every paragraph of which ends with the word stupid. It starts out:

“Heaven knows I try to keep up with what’s going on when I watch hockey, but it’s a fast game, and most of the time I don’t know why the referee or linesman or other guy in a striped shirt blows the whistle, so I ask somebody and when they tell me I feel stupid.”

A couple of paragraphs later it goes on:

“It’s easy for guys who have been patrons of the game of hockey to recognize infractions of the rules, but how’s somebody like me who doesn’t know cross checking from butt ending supposed to know when they’re doing it? Then, if I ask somebody, I feel stupid.”

Here’s another quote from this old column to help me make my point:

“There are certain things I understand about hockey, but then everybody understands them because how could you miss them? Like ‘charging.’ Your kid (your kid is why you see all this hockey in the first place) goes on the road for a weekend series and you have to stay in a hotel for two nights, eating at restaurants, and you pull out your Master Card and put the weekend on it, that’s called charging, and when I do it, I feel stupid.”

I wrote most of that more than 30 years ago and I’ve been feeling stupid ever since. But hold it! We now realize it must have been artificial stupidity, the opposite of artificial intelligence.

Here’s the final paragraph from that old missive:

“Sometimes I watch the frustration the hockey players experience in chasing that little black puck around a slippery surface while being knocked around by other people just for trying to achieve a goal. I think of hockey as a metaphor for life, because the same things happen to you when you try to accomplish anything — there’s always somebody in your way to knock you off balance and stop you from reaching your goal — and when my mind wanders down those philosophical pathways I miss something on the ice like ‘hooking’ or ‘slashing’ and I ask somebody what happened and when they tell me I feel stupid.

Unfortunately, hockey isn’t the only area of life where situations can make you feel…well, you know. Like if I’m at Menards or Home Depot in my yuppie khakis and polo shirt perusing the shelves and I recognize nothing on display; what the stuff is for in the home, and even the tools to install it. Then I look down the aisle and there’s this corpulent guy in bib overalls and camo cap who is intelligently filling a shopping cart with stuff that I don’t even recognize that he’ll need for some home project. I realize that the only things I do recognize in the whole place are cooking grills and toilet paper, and I feel stupid.

And don’t get me started on bird baths. We have had birth baths at our homes over the years, including today where one is located along a sidewalk leading to the street. I walk by it every day and I have never seen a bird taking a bath in it. And in past yards where we’ve put out bird baths, I never saw any birds bathing either, and I wonder why we put out good hard-earned money for bird baths that never get used, or even care about birds’ bathing habits, and I feel stupid.

Finally (and it’s about time), how about this? I’m sent to the grocery store and told to get sweet potatoes and when I get home, I’m told I got yams. I realize I don’t know the difference between sweet potatoes and yams and, yup, I feel stupid.

Oh, and what about TV remotes? They are intentionally designed to make the user feel stupid. (One of the buttons on ours I fear would send the Strategic Air Command on a nuclear attack on Moscow.)

But I am relieved to know now that all this is only artificial stupidity. I hope my intelligence ain’t. (Oops, better brush up on your usage, pal.  Ain’t ain’t no real word…stupid.) 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.

When intelligence really was artificial...

 Written by Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTribune on 1-6-23

 Let’s start the new year out with a few ruminations on education. Zzzzzz? Maybe not.

We’ll be taking a different look at Artificial Intelligence than the one we (that’d be me) addressed in August, neither of which betrays any understanding whatsoever of what is referred to as “AI” actually is.

 

But I like what the words Artificial Intelligence imply because I want to say I wish something called artificial intelligence had been around when I was a school kid. It would have explained a lot. Like why I couldn’t read well in early grades or do math. I thought a multiplication table was a table in the hospital where they delivered twins.

 

I figured I was smart enough, though. It’s just that my intelligence was artificial, although it wasn’t called that back then.

 

Which brings me to my point: If there is artificial intelligence there has to be artificial stupidity, right? It’s Newton’s law. You don’t hear as much about that, but I’m quite familiar with it. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Newton also invented a popular cookie with figs, the opposite of which is the chocolate chip.

 

I came to believe my lackluster performance in early classrooms was due to the fact that I was younger than most of the other kids. My parents had gone ahead and started me in kindergarten when I was only four years old. Almost all of the other kids were five, some nearly six and looking around for possible spouses.

 

I didn’t realize that then, though. I didn’t realize that until sixth grade when several girls suddenly showed up on exercise day (we didn’t have a gym) with early evidence of armpit hair. Checking in the mirror at home, I found no hair at all under my arms. Not a follicle. I think I believed hair was a sign of strength (see Paul Bunyan’s beard), and boys are supposed to be stronger than girls, and how come I don’t have any armpit hair and some of the sixth-grade girls do? There goes football.

 

So aside from having only artificial intelligence, not the real thing, was I destined to be a hairless weakling? These thoughts did not bode well for the future. Rocket science was out, for example, along with brain surgery and maybe statistical analysis, whatever that was, not to mention the boxing ring. Wrestling? Maybe.

 

It took me awhile, but I credit the small deer “Bambi” for teaching me to read. I was taken to the movie by my parents and loved it so much I got the “Bambi” comic book. Looking through it I suddenly realized I was reading the words in those clouds above the characters’ heads. Thumper the rabbit and Flower the skunk said stuff I could understand. Hmm. I guess I can read, I thought. And I could.

 

My life was transformed but I wasn’t quite ready for “War and Peace.” For that I’d need hair under my arms, and maybe in other places. I did try to tackle “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” thinking it was an underwater baseball story. That takes a bit of artificial stupidity.

 

But I soldiered on, junior high (algebra took me by surprise — letters like A, B and X instead of numbers). High school geometry was a blast with all those triangles — isosceles, equilateral, etcetera. I had thought Isosceles was the Egyptian pharaoh who followed Pharaoh Kaopectate, but no. More artificial stupidity.

 

My high school geometry teacher instructed that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but added, while winking, that some Duluth students “prefer the boulevard.” That’s what some people called curvy Skyline Drive, at one time a favorite lovers’ overlook. That’s all I remember about geometry.

 

World History was difficult to stay awake in for someone with artificial intelligence (or stupidity). When the teacher asked me the name of Alexander the Great’s horse, and I said, “Silver,” there were repercussions.

 

Eventually, of course, my armpits began spouting hair, along with my face and even my chest, so I decided to go to college. I liked college, sitting around the student center smoking cigarettes between classes discussing weighty world problems like what’s happening on Saturday night or where to go for the best pizza.  (Doctor’s note: He quit smoking decades ago.)

 

Just about everybody smoked in those days. Every so often attractive young women employed by tobacco companies would wander through the student center smilingly handing out free cigarettes to the student loungers and card players, just like in the Vegas casinos in the old days. What’s not to like about college?

 

What about learning stuff? I took a lot of English, history, economics and political science courses where I learned about Shakespeare, Benjamin Franklin and Jeremy Bentham, the English philosopher/economist who, when he died almost 200 years ago, had his body stuffed and placed in a glass case that is still on display. What else do you need to know in life?

 

Well, here’s something: I found the courses in economic thought enlightening. The very bases of economics, the professor said, are the factors of production: Land, labor, capital and entrepreneur. I figured they were important to know for the final exam, but couldn’t get them through my head until I adapted them to a popular song of the day, “An Affair to Remember.”

 

My version went: “Our love affair, may it long endure, through land, labor, capital and entrepreneur.” That worked out fine for the test but wasn’t so hot on curvy Skyline Drive, though. See what I mean about artificial intelligence?

 

NEXT TIME; Artificial Respiration (AR). So, you can breathe easy.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.

What’s all this about artificial intelligence?

 

Ahead of his time on hairstyles

Written by Jim Heffernan for the Duluth NewsTribune/8-5-23   

The following screed blew into my lap while sitting in a park one day in the merry-merry month of May. Or it might have been in June by the light of the silvery moon. Then again, maybe it was a night in July, beneath the starlit sky.

 Whatever. I looked the blown-in-by-the-wind mini-manifesto over and decided to share it.

 

It begins: “What’s all this talk about artificial intelligence? I’m one of the smartest people I know, and it’s the real McCoy, Buster.  Not artificial.

 

“Describing it they just use the initials A.I. thinking everybody knows what it means. Well, there ain’t nuttin' artificial about my intelligence. Everybody whom knows me knows that. I don’t believe in it. My great uncle once removed (from the hoosegow) had a wooden leg that we all admired. Took it off every night to sleep. That’s artificial leg intelligence on display right there at home.

 

“At first I thought A.I. stood for Albert Instine (ain’t sure I spelt it rite), the smartest man on Earth when he was alive. He came up with the theory of relativity which led to people understanding about their relatives, like how they were related to their third cousin. We were a little confused about my great uncle with the wooden leg until Albert Instine cleared it all up with his theory of relativity.

 

“I don’t see no need for artificial intelligence when we — I’m talkin’ men like me who think deep alot — can figure everything out all by ourselves without using no computers. Can’t help it; we just know stuff. How? I learnt my education out behind the barn. That’s all you need. Put your jeans on before your boots. Hello?

 

“But back to A.I. (Albert Instine). He liked to look up at the stars at night when it wasn’t too cloudy. You could tell he was really smart by the way he wore his hair. He was decades ahead of his time on men’s hairstyle, which involved strict avoidance of barbers. That was one of his greatest accomplishments. Saves money too. He was so admired I read where a farmer named one of his chickens after him.

 

“But enough about Albert Instine.

 

“So now we hear that the writers and actors in Hollywood are on strike because they fear they could be replaced by artificial intelligence. If you ask me, it’s about time. I don’t see TV much (the wife likes “Price is Right”) but every time I turn it on, I doze off. I say they need artificial intelligence.

 

“Then I read somewheres that AI might someday surpass human intelligence. Well, they better not try to surpass me, that’s for sure. When I was in school the teacher told my parents I might be the smartest kid in the class if I ever showed up. This was before I quit school after eighth grade to get started on my chosen field, to become a circus clown (don’t laugh, it’s a serious business), but that never worked out when the circuses sold the elephants, leaving the clowns with nothing to shovel.

 

“In the meantime I traveled around the county alot stopping here and there at one of our lakes to fish. I got damn good at it too, pulling them in head over tail until some game warden came along claiming you needed a license from the state to fish. What? The state owns the fish? All the walleyes? All the bass? Both small mouth and big mouth?

 

“That was when I decided to enter politics, and you know where that can lead. I never went to jail, though. Politics is a pretty good deal.

 

“I better cut it off right here. Just give me three squares a day, a nice recliner for watchin’ the Twins on the tube, a six pack of brew, a friendly mutt and a loyal wifey to bring home the bacon and take care of the domicile (fancy word — told you I was smarter than most) and I’ll get along just fine. 

 

“No artificial intelligence needed, nohow. I got the real thing.

 

“Finis. (Yup, I know my Latin too. Then there’s Sempis Fideler. Go tell THAT to the Marines!)”

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.