Thursday, January 10, 2019

Why Trump Needs AI

There's a great Dilbert strip that ran today. In it, our favorite jaded engineer is discussing the "breakthrough" he had in developing AI technology. Basically, he realized he was trying to duplicate something that doesn't exist: "rational human thought."

I think that fairly explains the current situation in the White House. Very few people who thought about it rationally would vote for the Donald as our president. At least that's what us Dems like to tell ourselves. But, there is more to the human make-up than rational thought. Unlike Dilbert, I haven't despaired completely, but I do realize that rationality only makes up part of our "intelligence." There are definitely things like "gut" and instinct that also come into play when making decisions. Trump has always understood this and capitalized on it vs. Dems who want to intellectualize everything.

And until the people that make AI understand this...well, maybe they already do. Check out this article that recently ran in The Atlantic on Why Technology Favors Tyranny. I mean look at what Facebook is being accused of doing to the U.S. elections.

Perhaps the bottom line is that Trump doesn't need to be smart, he's got tools (computers) he can leverage for that.

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