His most intense derision

Trump’s expertise is all we need to know.

According to Donald Trump, concerns about the dangers of artificial intelligence technology – that “robots will be marching into our cities and getting rid of us all” – are a hoax.

It’s the kind of language the US president typically reserves for the objects of his most intense derision – theories about human-driven climate change, investigations into Russian election-meddling, and the drives to impeach and remove him from office during his first presidential term.

Derision is one word for it; others are rage, fury, eruption.

Styling himself as the “hoax buster”, in a series of social media posts on Monday he issued a full-throated endorsement of what he called “the greatest economic development engine in history” and scorned those who doubted the benefits of the technology.

Well that will be because he knows nothing about it.

The ranks of doubters have been growing in recent weeks, however, amidst anxiety over the disruptive nature of AI – if not worries about potentially civilisation-threatening danger – among some industry insiders and politicians, including from within Trump’s own Republican Party.

And here’s the thing: they know something about it, and he doesn’t, and worse than that, he doesn’t know he doesn’t. He thinks he knows everything about everything. We know this from hearing him talk for the last (sob) eleven years.

None of that has deterred Trump, however, whose latest social media fusillade was only his latest effort to turn back growing AI scepticism through sheer force of will.

Because will is what he has instead of intelligence and the ability to take in what other people say. Will is a really really bad substitute for those two qualities.

“Congress under both Democratic and Republican control has been asleep at the wheel,” [Bernie Sanders] said. “And now we have a president whose ignorance regarding this issue is truly embarrassing.”

According to Trump, however, what’s needed isn’t debate or new policies, it’s trust in his authority and judgement.

“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades,” he wrote. “We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies.”

That’s a minor masterpiece of self-undermining. Zero intelligent people would ever refer to themselves as SMART (High IQ!).