I want to start today’s post with a disclaimer. I am not a Luddite! (Some younger readers may need to look for that word in your online dictionary.) I have worked in the technology field for most of my adult life. I have seen many great things come from technological advances and have also seen times where there were flops or total failures. I do not dislike technology, but I do not love technology that has been created just for the sake of technology or technologists. Having said that, let us move along.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I grew up in a small farming community. While my family did not own a farm, but like many other teenagers in my hometown, I worked on a farm during summers. I drove tractors, combines, trucks, etc. Some years I worked from planting season until harvest. When equipment broke or failed, I helped do repairs to get things working again.

I am amazed when I read about farming today. Tractors with six or eight drive wheels. Tractors with more onboard computers than we have in our offices. Tractors that drive themselves. Tractors that can’t be repaired without a service call by the dealer in a truck with even more computers but few actual tools and no mechanics. The world has left people like me behind in the dust.

But these advances come at a price. Farmers pay six figure prices for equipment that is used one or two weeks a year and for the other fifty weeks or so sits at the dealer awaiting repairs or sitting in an expensive storage shed on the farm. And then we, those who have no understanding of farming, complain about the high cost of food which we often waste.

You may wonder how this ties into the title of this post. I used abbreviations for the title because that seems to be a trend today. AI is artificial intelligence, the latest and greatest trend in information technology today. A method for us to have all knowledge at our fingertips without any understanding of this knowledge. ACS is a term I coined for the post. It is artificial common sense. It seems to me that intelligence is of little importance without the common sense related to the use of that knowledge and an understanding of the source of this knowledge.

A rather simplistic example of AI versus ACS can be found in these two statements. AI – “Fire is hot. You can get warm near fire.” ACS would add – “While fire is hot and you can get warm near fire, if you get too close you will get burned (or may be consumed by the fire).” Pretty simple, right?

A few days ago, I was rearranging one of my bookshelves and came across a book that I purchased and read in the 1980’s. It was a collection of some humorous articles by an outdoor writer, Patrick F. McManus, between 1968 and 1978. I decided to browse these articles to compare them to what we might see today. One especially stood out and I wanted to quote a short selection here.

McManus wrote, “One of these days they’ll probably come out with a mechanical bird dog that locates pheasants with a special scent detector and radar. A small on-dog computer will record and analyze all available information and give the hunter a report: two roosters and five hens in stubble field – 253 feet. A pointer on the dog’s back would indicate the exact direction…Since no self-respecting hunter would want to be seen carrying his dog around by a handle, all but the cheapest models would be designed to look like nifty attaché cases…”

While this was humorous when originally written, it almost seems like a credible concept today. The question is, “Do we really need something like this?” I suspect that if you ask a pheasant hunter, initially they would laugh but after thinking more they might ask, “Why would you want something like that? Some days when you find no pheasants provide as much enjoyment as the days when they are plentiful.”

When I consider all the AI tools that have burst onto the scene in the recent past, I wonder if having a tool that does all our research (or other work) for us doesn’t present the same dilemma. For example, when doing research in person, “Do I always stay on a single subject? Or do I see something that appears only slightly related that leads me in a new direction?”

Have we, in our haste to make and market a new tool failed by omitting the more difficult, common sense, component? I see articles about how AI tools are being used improperly. I also see articles about how AI tools present security problems or concerns. I wonder if AI tools are really needed or are they like the self-driving tractor that, while a neat (dating myself here) idea has only the benefit of driving up costs?

I have no answers to these questions. I only pose them as food for thought. If we don’t use CS (common sense) or ACS (artificial common sense), is AI (artificial intelligence) really beneficial?