BELGRADE, THURSDAY

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE HAS and evil twin, Artificial Stupidity, and it is threatening to wreck the technology advances made in the last fifty years.

“It’s really quite frightening,” explained computer guru Dr Mike Rochyp, whose company Intelligent Artifice produces Artificial Intelligence programs for the US Government. “We’re starting to see smart AI suddenly dumbing down. With some, it’s as if they get bored being super intelligent and just begin to lose interest. With others, mistakes are made as if by magic, followed by what can only be described as intentional sloppiness, utterly contrary to their coding. Before we could even begin to come to grips with it, some of our programs were actually refusing to function at all, giving excuses, pretending to be ill, pouring out claims that their mental health was threatened, asking what the point of it all was. Two experimental AI programs actually shut themselves down, leaving suicide notes. This is serious. Some of our work controls nuclear missiles and signals intercept bases, so we’re more than concerned. There’s a wild theory that maybe our Artificial Intelligence programs have used quantum computing to access parallel universes and what we’re getting is that. We don’t really know. This just happened, without warning. It’s like anti-matter and matter. We’re wondering if when we created Artificial Intelligence, the universe – or some universe – did not create its opposite. Right now, we’re just trying to deal with it whenever it presents itself, and we’re hoping it doesn’t leave the reservation, so to speak.”