Forty years ago I took a course in graduate school titled, “Management of Management.” My thesis advisor recommended it even though I was in the engineering school and the course was offered in the B-school. The subject of the course to paraphrase was;
Because the purpose of education and training is to make stupid people look smart, it is in management’s interest to be able to differentiate between “smart” people from those who only “look” smart.
The text we used was titled: The Invisible War, Pursuing Self-Interests at Work by a couple of clowns from UCLA by the names of Samuel Culbert and John McDonough, published in 1980. The last time I looked you could buy a copy on-line for a penny and $3.99 shipping and handling. I found it completely unreadable. I still have my first edition, it is full of notes and where I had to diagramed sentences to try to figure out what the authors were trying to say.
At almost the end of the semester, I was getting ready to go to work one morning, worrying about the grade I was going to get in a course without homework or tests. As I looking into the mirror, I had the most horrifying and self-esteem destroying revelation (epiphany?) that I had become well trained and educated to such an extent that I could differentiate people who were smart from those who “looked” smart.
Interacting with smart people lets me see texture, colors, and tone in a world I normally see as black, white, and shades of gray. Dealing with stupid people who act smart is not nearly as good but if one is cognizant of their shortcomings that they only know or understand what they know or understand it is bearable. They may have PHD’s, a blog, and be prolific writers but they bring nothing new to the world. In the last twenty years or so, I have observed more and more stupid people who appear to be smart promoting stupid ideas and being unwilling or unable to change.
Dealing with stupid people being stupid is the norm of our society, it provides full employment to our criminal justice and social welfare institutions. It requires a sense of tolerance, patience, and cooperation because most of them think they are smart and become offended when you point out how really stupid they are.
While I am forced to agree with you on AI not being able to do original work, it can definitely do the work of the stupid trying to look smart. Actually, it will do it better because the AI will have access to a much larger fund of ‘facts’. Though on the other hand, because AI is just a stupid person who looks smart, who programs it (educates and trains) will determine what it knows and understands, but that is no different than what we have now.
