In 2015, a group of researchers published a paper titled “What is stupid?: People’s conception of unintelligent behavior,” in which they attempted to use the human ability of recognising stupidity to categorise its different forms. It is one of very few documented experiments attempting such a feat.

They identified three general groups. ‘Confident Ignorance’, where an individual tragically overestimates their own knowledge or skill; ‘Lack of Practicality’, a failure of common sense where a technically correct action is applied in a contextually absurd manner; and ‘Lack of Control’, where absentmindedness or impulsivity causes someone to fail to apply the knowledge they do possess. 

All three of these forms of stupidity have been widely documented – and mocked – when exhibited by all the state of the art language models. Lol! The AI (or actually, the VC-backed corporation running the model) confidently assumes the flawed data is a true representation of merit, and it lacks the practical common sense to question a nonsensical pattern! Stupid machine. We have nothing to fear from it.

But looping back to Musil, this is exactly the type of stupidity we should fear the most—on two levels. First, as he said, “stupidity lulls mistrust; it ‘disarms’”, making us less aware of the risks of trusting a stupid machine. And second, by relying on data created by humans to build its conceptual frameworks, we’re building in the cultural and conceptual stupidity of the society it exists in.

The quasi-religious fervour around the potential of AI is not helping. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian and anti-Nazi dissident who was hanged for participating in a plot to kill Hitler, wrote in a letter that “Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or of a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity.”

In this case, our biggest stupidity might be building these systems without a robust, generalisable understanding of the stupidity we want them to avoid. Because before we succeed in creating a machine that can think, we must first truly understand all the ways in which we fail to. And to understand this requirement completely, we must, according to Musil, apply what he sees as the antithesis of stupidity: humility. 

Unfortunately, this is a behaviour quite apparently alien to those running the companies developing this technology. Or those championing its omnipresent rollout. 

A final thought on Musil’s lecture from philosopher Sacha Golob, who wrote a great piece on it for Psyche, simply because it’s relevant on so many levels:

“If history is anything to go by, a few hundred years from now, our ancestors will find at least one part of contemporary morality almost unintelligible – ‘How could decent people ever have believed that?’ If they are not to condemn us as evil, they might well have to conclude that we were stupid.”

And quite probably, we are.