Attribution: Dmitry Racer, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, will do his best to assist the keeper in sorting through artificial intelligence—AI, and authentic dumbness—AD, based on the following circumstances:
*The keeper turns the engine off and listens on the car radio while waiting for Phyllis at a medical facility, as a guest on NPR’s Ira Plato’s Science Friday makes the point that AI is better than doctors at reading certain kinds of medical imagery.
*Car battery not strong enough to start car when Phyllis is ready to go, the keeper having forgotten that as he listened to the radio, all kinds of other things—like headlights were on and draining electrical power.
*Displaying extreme AD, the keeper realizes an emergency starter device is somewhere in his vehicle but he can’t access it for lack of electrical energy, ignorance as to emergency procedures, and not having access to the library of owner manuals which are back home.
*Phyllis on the phone finds a jump-start facility which says it will be two hours and $95.
*Two hours and fifteen minutes later a young man in a junker car shows up, pops the hood and attaches a device to the keeper’s vehicle and the engine immediately fires up.
*The keeper drives home and finds the car owner’s manuals which are too daunting so he and Phyllis ignore them and pour a libation which they use to toast the keeper’s Authentic Dumbness.
Photo by Bill Stokes