Related: Michael Crichton popularized the term "Gell-Mann Amnesia" to describe a condition reported by his friend, physicist Murray Gell-Mann, in which people who could easily detect flaws in journalistic reporting on their own area of expertise suddenly lost all credulity when reading news in other areas.
All of us are only situationally smart. I imagine a term for this that applies equally well to people and machines would be something like "thintellectual."
I know a lot of brilliant and utterly hapless thintellectuals.
Dumbsmarten is good, it has the contrasting uncanny ring. The Scot and German in me reaches for a sibling term: uncanny kenheit, from ken, "to know." The uncanny knowingness of a mind that knows sideways to ours.
Culture has noticed the dumbsmarten pattern. Mickey animated a broom that didn't know when to stop. Frankenstein's creature could quote Milton ("I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel"), but was flummoxed by a village. Raymond Babbitt could count the toothpicks, but not cross the street. Forrest Gump is the mirror image; he looked dumb, but was actually wise.
Our oldest instinct with jagged minds is to curse, punish, kill, or confine. Joseph, the savant dream-reader, was thrown into the pit by uncomprehending brothers, who he later saved. For Daedalus it was the Labyrinth - sandboxing.
My Octopus Teacher and Arrival offer a different approach: to observe an uncanny intelligence, learn its grammar, and notice where it's brilliant and where it's blind. In our case, since these minds are crafted and we're human, we can reprogram them to benefit from us in Jiminy Cricket and Geppetto style, as we're consciences and makers both.
I already use this dumbsmart term A LOT with just the simple ways I now use AI. The idiocy of it is unfathomable. (Also the racism, let me add. I've had to tell AI to include people of color in graphics that include photos.)
There is a Marathi word called Akkal-Shunya (अक्कल शून्य), intellectually zero. An established word in English which AI can use in their Tinder profile can be Sophomoric 🤣
Some of our must lauded intellectuals and leaders are dumbsmart. Thiel, Musk, Bezos are incredibly smart in one dimension yet lack a kindergartner’s understanding of ecology, systemic limits, or human dignity.
This really rings true to me, especially as someone who has been living and writing about "smart home" for so long. My smart light is not smart when the voice assistant won't turn it off, or when I have to go upstairs to get my husband's phone to see the app to change the settings.
With AI, just the other day I used Gemini to come up with a recipe for me for my book club. It did a great job of adjusting the scale for the number of people and coming up with a plan for me to cook with minimal interruptions.
But the recipe didn't include salt, and even though I know enough about cooking that I should have realized that I needed at least some salt - I just blindly followed it. So when it came out kind of flavorless, I was feeling very dumbsmarten myself. I chided Gemini which made me feel better but still made me feel a bit like a GenIdiot.
While Dumbsmarten kind of sounds like a Volkswagen ad, you are on to something. We used to call people StreetSmart and BookSmart for different types of intelligence. Maybe it's Data Smart or Artificial Smart?
I love this. I personally propose spintellect (spiky + intellect)
Perhaps it will be "artificially intelligent"
Related: Michael Crichton popularized the term "Gell-Mann Amnesia" to describe a condition reported by his friend, physicist Murray Gell-Mann, in which people who could easily detect flaws in journalistic reporting on their own area of expertise suddenly lost all credulity when reading news in other areas.
All of us are only situationally smart. I imagine a term for this that applies equally well to people and machines would be something like "thintellectual."
I know a lot of brilliant and utterly hapless thintellectuals.
Dumbsmarten is good, it has the contrasting uncanny ring. The Scot and German in me reaches for a sibling term: uncanny kenheit, from ken, "to know." The uncanny knowingness of a mind that knows sideways to ours.
Culture has noticed the dumbsmarten pattern. Mickey animated a broom that didn't know when to stop. Frankenstein's creature could quote Milton ("I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel"), but was flummoxed by a village. Raymond Babbitt could count the toothpicks, but not cross the street. Forrest Gump is the mirror image; he looked dumb, but was actually wise.
Our oldest instinct with jagged minds is to curse, punish, kill, or confine. Joseph, the savant dream-reader, was thrown into the pit by uncomprehending brothers, who he later saved. For Daedalus it was the Labyrinth - sandboxing.
My Octopus Teacher and Arrival offer a different approach: to observe an uncanny intelligence, learn its grammar, and notice where it's brilliant and where it's blind. In our case, since these minds are crafted and we're human, we can reprogram them to benefit from us in Jiminy Cricket and Geppetto style, as we're consciences and makers both.
I already use this dumbsmart term A LOT with just the simple ways I now use AI. The idiocy of it is unfathomable. (Also the racism, let me add. I've had to tell AI to include people of color in graphics that include photos.)
I like Mo Bitar's take on AI. He is right in the middle of it as a programmer and he has a lot of good vids up on Youtube.
He calls it autocomplete with admin privileges.
Pattern recognition on steroids, but incapable of fathoming context.
There is a Marathi word called Akkal-Shunya (अक्कल शून्य), intellectually zero. An established word in English which AI can use in their Tinder profile can be Sophomoric 🤣
Some of our must lauded intellectuals and leaders are dumbsmart. Thiel, Musk, Bezos are incredibly smart in one dimension yet lack a kindergartner’s understanding of ecology, systemic limits, or human dignity.
“We’re building something smarter and better than a human” is a dumb comment made by a lot of smart people.
Idiot Savant?
学者バカ- -Gakushabaka (lit. scholar-fool)?
This really rings true to me, especially as someone who has been living and writing about "smart home" for so long. My smart light is not smart when the voice assistant won't turn it off, or when I have to go upstairs to get my husband's phone to see the app to change the settings.
With AI, just the other day I used Gemini to come up with a recipe for me for my book club. It did a great job of adjusting the scale for the number of people and coming up with a plan for me to cook with minimal interruptions.
But the recipe didn't include salt, and even though I know enough about cooking that I should have realized that I needed at least some salt - I just blindly followed it. So when it came out kind of flavorless, I was feeling very dumbsmarten myself. I chided Gemini which made me feel better but still made me feel a bit like a GenIdiot.
While Dumbsmarten kind of sounds like a Volkswagen ad, you are on to something. We used to call people StreetSmart and BookSmart for different types of intelligence. Maybe it's Data Smart or Artificial Smart?