How AI makes inadvertent idiots of us all (and it’s not THAT new cuz we’re THAT easy)

First, a personal story about my uncle.

My uncle grew up on a dairy farm in the northern part of the state of Georgia in the USA. My uncle’s Connecticut-based family had purchased the farm for my uncle’s father, my grandfather, who had graduated from UConn, Connecticut’s public state university, as an agricultural engineer.

At that time, just after World War II, land in the American South was cheap, cheaper than in the North anyways, and my grandfather, raised on American exceptionalism, liked the idea of humanitarian adventure, of using his elite education to develop an underdeveloped part of his country.

So, in addition to running his dairy farm, Grandad became the Director of the Georgia Mountains Regional Commission and advised the US Congress on rural poverty.

My grandfather’s most consistent complaint as a government advisor was that DC prioritized structure and process (appearance) over substance and sustainability (outcomes) to the detriment of the potential recipients of various federal programs. Granddaddy blamed incomplete and biased data coupled with self-serving political interpretations.

Of course, now…