AI

There has been a lot of talk about it. For quite some time, actually. But more urgent, more intense lately. What am I talking about? Artificial intelligence, what else?

I am getting a little tired of it, truth be told. Not that that matters much to anybody. Least of all to my wife. She has gotten used to my petulance, and impatience, and grumpiness, as she puts it. I like to use other descriptions. Rightful indignation, for one.

At my stage of life, I like authenticity. Intelligence is intelligence. I might not be able to describe it, but I recognize it when I see it. And I have not been seeing much of it lately. Artificial, or the real kind.

What is intelligence? It used to be book smarts. The kid who always sat at the front of the glass, wore thick glasses, raised his hand even before the teacher finished asking his question, who always got the highest score in the regular tests that the teachers were fond of giving in my childhood. Yes, that kid. He was smart, everybody said. But then what happened to him in college? He had trouble finding a date. He went to movies alone, even on Saturday nights, while the gorgeous girls were escorted by the football quarterback, or the tennis wizard. Smart? Maybe, maybe not.

There are other kinds of smart. Social smarts. Street smarts. Career smarts. Are all of these signs of intelligence, too? Why not?

If you do something well, I figure you must be smart. A guy who plays the piano better than I do (which does not take much doing) must be smart. At least smarter than I am. By the same token, I can insert a pacemaker into a patient’s heart faster than most people on this planet. But that does not count for much when you are retired. If I order pizza, they want money as payment. My offer to implant a pacemaker in their heart leaves them unimpressed.

People keep talking about Artificial Intelligence. There are billions of dollars in business riding on this. I get that. However, what bothers me is that in this rush for the artificial, the real is being ignored. What about real intelligence, folks?

Nobody cares. Look at the human race. Have we learned anything from our history? We keep fighting over pieces of land. There is plenty of land in this world. But each one of us wants a little bit more for himself. We keep fighting over whose God is better. Are there multiple gods up there, each one egging on his own followers and condemning the rest? What kind of god would that be?

We keep fighting over color. My skin color is better than yours. I am better than you. Therefore, I deserve to get the best there is in this world. You can have what is left over. And then we go to our respective places of worship and mouth banalities, parrot-like, about God loving everybody and blessing everybody. We keep confessing our sins, as if that wipes the plate clean and we can go out and sin some more.

God, please give us some real intelligence.

But that might take a while. In the meantime, we have to make do with the artificial kind.

I was reading the other day about how artificial intelligence will revolutionize our flying experience. Really?

Let us see what they are pushing. Machine learning will analyze the weather forecast, traffic conditions and security-checkpoint waiting times. Why? So you can optimize when to leave home. Folks, I get the weather channel on my TV, thank you very much. Traffic alerts are given on the radio. And, by and large, I have learned that if I have to catch a local flight, leaving home about 2 hours ahead of time generally is safe enough. If you are that important that every minute matters to you, I can recommend several private jets. Can’t afford them? Then keep quiet and behave like the rest of us.

They are also promising that artificial intelligence can connect your suitcase to your smartphone. Your bag will also be able to roll on its side without any help from you. Wow! I would rather beef up real intelligence which can help airline employees connect my suitcase to me at my destination and not send it off to Sidney while I am stranded in Chicago. Never mind smartphones. Just use your heads.

And then there are robotaxis. AI will rustle up a cab for you, sans driver. An app would check your flight information and then order this cab without any input from you. This is apparently being tested in Las Vegas. Folks, forget about it. I rather like the reassurance of having a cabbie in the driver’s seat. An empty driver’s seat is likely to provoke panic attacks. Also, I rather like a bit of chitchat with the cab drivers.

Security screening seems to be the next target for AI. We might be entering a world of camera and sensor-enabled arches, biometric systems, computer vision and the like. All to ease your passage through security. Thanks, but no thanks. My wife and I beep like the dickens every time we walk through security. I would rather opt for a pat-down every time. I can handle a rude TSA guy, but rude and malfunctioning computers always get my goat.

Then there is the promise of concierge bots and smart airport flight boards. Robots roaming around to help us? That I can accept. Can’t be ruder than the so-called agents sprinkled around major international airports. But the flight board? I don’t need a smart one. I will settle for an accurate one, if that is not too much to ask.

Maybe I am getting grumpy with age. But I really don’t much care for intelligence in others anymore, real or artificial. Just give me a human being who is polite, helpful, and has common sense. If that is not too much to ask.