Why Artificial Stupidity Could Be Crucial To AI Self-Driving Cars

Dr. Lance Eliot, AI Insider

[Ed. Note: For reader’s interested in Dr. Eliot’s ongoing business analyses about the advent of self-driving cars, see his online Forbes column: https://forbes.com/sites/lanceeliot/]

We all generally seem to know what it means to say that someone is intelligent.

In contrast, when you label someone as “stupid,” the question arises as to what exactly that means. For example, does stupidity imply the lack of intelligence in a zero-sum fashion, or does stupidity occupy its own space and sit adjacent to intelligence as a parallel equal?

Let’s do a thought experiment on this weighty matter.

Suppose we somehow had a bucket filled with intelligence. We are going to pretend that intelligence is akin to something tangible and that we can essentially pour it into and possibly out of a bucket that we happen to have handy. Upon pouring this bucket filled with intelligence onto say the floor, what do you have left?

One answer is that the bucket is now entirely empty and there is nothing left inside the bucket at all. The bucket has become vacuous and contains absolutely nothing. Another answer is that the bucket upon being emptied of intelligence has a leftover that consists of stupidity. In…