In honor of the recent discourse among the sixteen Republican presidential wannabes, I asked Meat what he thought of artificial intelligence.
"You mean when you had to give an oral report on something you didn't read but you managed to bluff through anyway? Acting like you knew what you were talking about, man you used to be good at that."
"No, no Meat. I'm talking about computers and smartphones and cars and bad science fiction movies. It's coming fast."
"That junk ain't real, man."
Obviously. Meat has a way of getting to the point without looking. Artificial, "ain't real": get it? Sure you do.
"Meat, in ten years you'll be driving a car that drives itself. You just tell it where you want to go and sit back and ride."
"Not me! That's all part of Barack Hussein OBummer's master plan. First our cars, then our guns. He'll get my steering wheel when he pries it from my cold dead hands!"
He made the last statement thrusting his smartphone, all 559 dollars worth of it, high above his head like it was the bloody steering wheel of his visions. And technically, when he's playing his Ghost Dukes of Hazard app, it is.
There's an app for that.
Artificial intelligence comes in many forms, from the kind IBM puts on a tiny computer chip to the kind that's driven to spend over a thousand bucks a year to have a flashy phone. Some might say Trump's lead among Republican voters is proof we're surrounded by artificial intelligence.
"Well Meat, it's coming whether you like it or not. Google's got cars driving themselves all over the country right now. In six years and two million miles, they haven't caused a single accident."
"But how many they been in?"
"One just last week makes fourteen in six years."
"See!?!"
This time he thrust his phone at me like it was the Golden Sword of Truth, which is probably another app out there somewhere. If Bernie Sanders has a smartphone, I bet he's got the Golden Sword of Truth app, too. His artificial intelligence is probably smarter than Meat's artificial intelligence, him being from Vermont and all.
The great thing about the day of driverless cars being just around the corner is that the day of people hacking into cars is just this past week. Two guys, who were in it to be able to say told ya so, hacked into a moving Jeep Cherokee's onboard computer system and successfully ruined the driver's brand new Hane's tighty whiteys. They did it from miles away. If guys can take over your car when you're holding the wheel, imagine the fun they'll have when you give up the wheel for a little snooze on the road!
In my limited but expanding smartphone experience, I've noticed "take a U turn" is featured prominently in directions given by certain smartphone personal assistants. It seems that an intelligent navigator would be able to avoid the turn around and go back hack. You might say this is faulty intelligence, but not artificial.
Faulty intelligence is always real. Can't trump that!