Op-Ed: Superintelligence is losing to human stupidity

Just when you think AI-related things can’t get any stupider, human stupidity makes AI look intelligent. As humanity basks in the warm glow of an unquestioned all-pervasive parasitic criminal culture, moronic world-hating billionaires, and absurd hyper babble, good old Homo Sap trumps them all.

This AI-dependent form of stupidity is now so common it’s effectively folklore.

Consider the college AI essay debate. “When in doubt, cheat” is the anthem of the loser, but there’s more to it than that.  

The stupidity isn’t just the idiotic obvious cheating. It is obvious. Put your essay instructions into a chatbot, and they’ll all generate pretty much the same output. Sometimes they even make the same syntax and grammar mistakes. AI writing is usually unmistakable, particularly on the same subject.

The stupidity isn’t the AI, either. AI can only do what an LLM enables it to do. It can’t originate. It can’t extrapolate. It can’t come up with new perspectives or any sort of personal insight. It can recite Baa, Baa Black Sheep and have no idea what it means, let alone why it might be relevant in a conversation about human stupidity.

It’s the fact that none of these students could possibly survive a real test that defines the human stupidity. If you don’t know enough to do a single essay, how can you do a whole college degree?

Now consider the cost of a college degree. You’re spending that kind of money to guarantee failure? You’re going to do an internship or a job in a qualified position with the knowledge base of a house brick? Sure, you are. To put it another way, no, you’re not.

The human perception of AI is the real problem

Imagine being sold a car. You’re told that one day you may be able to get in the car and go somewhere. There are no roads and no road rules. There’s no insurance for third parties. Nobody’s too sure what to do if there’s an accident and someone gets hurt.

You hook up your AI, and it goes “Vroom, vroom” like one of those incredibly dumb kids you knew was a bore at the age of 3. The dumb kids are happy with the noise. They use the AI for everything they were already doing and at least knew how to do. Now they’re dependent on using something they barely understand to “earn” a living.

AI has been mythologized to the point of mass delusion. The real value of AI is misrepresented every second. The common educational and workplace uses of AI are very much like hiring Einstein to dig ditches.

Experts know that all too well. The public image of AI is that it’s some sort of magic.

“Chatbot culture” is making the perception harder to manage. The sheer naivete of this culture is almost unbelievable.

Of course your deepest personal issues can be solved by a non-existent person.

Of course there’ll be nothing wrong with whatever the AI produces.

Of course you can blame the AI for whatever disasters you cause.

Of course nobody cares if huge amounts of money are lost in a “procedural error”.

Are you dumb enough yet?

The “Golden Age of Stupidity” has solid human ancestry

The expression “Golden Age of Stupidity” was coined by Sophie McBain in a Guardian article in October 2025. Nobody’s arguing with the description. The linked article explains a lot about human cognition and the effect of AI on cognition when using it.

One of the studies involved MIT students who couldn’t even quote their own work. You’ll note that in this case the work was accepted on face value for submission, but no effort went into comprehension or even remembering it.

There is a precedent for this level of stupidity. Let’s spell this out so the ultra-macho intellectual superbeings whose mental stamina can barely survive a 10 minute YouTube video understand it.

So understand this, geniuses:

US literacy rates are abysmal. About 54% of US adults read below a sixth-grade level in 2026. How well are these severely handicapped people going to manage any sort of interaction with AI LLMs?

An incompetent society produces incompetence.  It also produces massive socioeconomic failure. According to Gemini, “The broader economic drain caused by low functional literacy levels is estimated to cost the U.S. economy up to $2.2 trillion annually.”

The social acceptance of stupidity has been a hallmark of US culture since the 1950s. It’s also a matter of perception. The dumb guy who gets you all killed is funny. The Valley Girl is, well, a “girl”, whatever that is. Watching media marketed at fruit fly brain level is normal. All these wonders were achieved without AI.

Not much has happened since, until AI.  

The disease has spread. Tolerance of idiots simply produced more idiots. A nerd is now someone who can figure out how to eat a hamburger without a chaperone.

It’s been such fun. Better still, the risk of anything ever appearing on a screen that’s not aimed at infantile morons has been averted.

But there’s hope.

If you have time, check out this thing, “60 Hilarious AI Responses That Left People Wondering How It Got Things So Wrong”. You’ll notice that compared to humanity’s 5000 years of recorded stupidity, it’s not even in the ballpark.

Human stupidity will inevitably triumph over AI. When the last human idiot makes their last stand in the last palatial dingy cubicle and they-there word things comes a-lookin’ for it, a-droolin’ and a-conjugatin’, the human will say, “Duhhh,” and the AI will never understand.