Artificial stupidity

ABSTRACT

Public debate about AI is dominated by Frankenstein Syndrome, the fear that AI will become superhuman and escape human control. Though superintelligence is theoretically possible, it distracts from a more pressing problem: the rise of Artificial Stupidity (AS). This article discusses the cultural roots of Frankenstein Syndrome, and provides a conceptual framework for evaluating the stupidity of artificial agents. It then identifies an alternative literary tradition that exposes the perils and benefits of AS. In the writings of Edmund Spenser, Jonathan Swift and E.T.A. Hoffmann, ASs replace, enslave or delude their human users. More optimistically, Joseph Furphy and Laurence Sterne imagine ASs that can augment human intelligence by serving as maps or as pipes. These writers provide a strong counternarrative to the myths that currently drive the AI debate. They identify ways even stupid agents can thwart human aims, and demonstrate the social and scientific value of literary texts.

KEYWORDS:

• Artificial intelligence
• stupidity
• English literature
• German literature
• Australian literature
• superintelligence
• singularity
• cognitive artefacts

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For a more balanced assessment of AlphaGo's intellect, see Mitchell (2019, 214–18).

2 One key aspect of superintelligence that Shelley left implicit was the possibility of an ‘intelligence explosion’, in which an AI learns to improve itself and unleashes exponential growth (Good 1966). When Frankenstein refuses to create a bride for the monster, why does the monster not simply steal Frankenstein's technology and start manufacturing new and improved mates for himself? He even has Frankenstein's lab notebook! (Shelley 1998, 105) Perhaps this possibility was simply too horrifying for Shelley to contemplate.

3 Actually this is just the ‘top-5’ accuracy, but the distinction is unimportant here.

4 See particularly his critique of abstract ideas (Hume 1978, 17–25).

5 References to The Faerie Queene are by book, canto and stanza number.

6 See https://www.mturk.com/.

7 Generated at https://talktotransformer.com/.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Falk

Michael Falk teaches eighteenth century literature at the University of Kent. His interest in AI is twofold. As a digital humanist, he uses natural language processing and machine learning to study linguistic patterns in literary texts. As a literary scholar, his key interest is in how self, mind and intellect are portrayed in literature. He has published on the history of the bildungsroman, colonial Australian poetry and the syntactic structure of the sonnet. He has work forthcoming on Romantic-era tragedy and the economics of eighteenth-century bookselling. When he isn't working, he watches birds and tries to learn new languages.