Artificial Intelligence (AI)
What is it? What isn’t it?
And how do we make it better?
These episodes focus on the concept of artificial intelligence (AI), exploring various facets of intelligence itself and distinguishing real from artificial intelligence. We question how intelligence is defined, debate whether it involves acquiring and retaining information, goal-oriented learning, and the ability to adapt or alter goals.
The conversation also touches on the challenges of distinguishing real from artificial intelligence, citing examples like older software and the potential for AI to mislead, as with dating app bots. With the potential arising for AI to mislead, never has critical thinking been so important to our democracy, as well as the agility of adapting to new paradigms
Ultimately, we emphasize the importance of critical thinking and adapting to new information in an age of abundant (and often misleading) data.
Mike:
Hi, Facebook Live! Welcome to a special edition - a special, special Facebook Live edition slash Open Mic Live with yours truly, Mike. And incidentally enough, we appear to be approaching closing time at the Columbus Metropolitan Library. Happy Hump Day, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, on this Wednesday, the 10th of September, 2025 AD.
Oh, what are we talking about? Oh, Artificial Intelligence! Yes, artificial intelligence, that is a hot subject these days, wouldn't you say? AI, not 'I way' as the artificial intelligence incorrectly suggested for me, by the way. Now, I think the term is completely meaningless these days, don't you think, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls? What is artificial intelligence? What does that mean to you? First of all, what is intelligence? Can we come to a definition of intelligence, and then add to the colors of intelligence, artificial sweeteners and beyond, to make it artificial intelligence?
Assumptions
It troubles me that I have a bot working on my behalf to post a comment to which I did not consent. That’s okay, it makes assumptions. Lord knows we all do, and sometimes they just burn our asses down to the ground.
So we shall resort to the cliché about assuming… "When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me." So try not to assume!
But you know, we all do because we're lazy and frankly, we don't have time to exhaustively check every single receipt on every goddamned thing and moment in the universe, right? So naturally, we indeed assume things, and let's not feel ashamed about it.
Defining “Artificial”
So, what's natural and what's artificial? Let's think about that as far as sweeteners are concerned. We all know we all have different experiences with the term "artificial" when it comes to sweetener. What's natural sweetener? I guess sugar, right?
David:
Anything that comes from the ground that is not man-made is natural. Artificial is anything that is man or machine-made.
Defining “Intelligence”
Mike:
So, intelligence. What is intelligence? I mean, what does it mean? Can we let's start attempting some answers here?
David:
Knowledge.
Mike:
The gain of information, the retaining of it?
David:
Acquiring and retaining information.
Mike:
But what's the last part of that sentence, can I write that part down?
David:
Depending on the subject. The more information you got, the more intelligent you get, depending on what subject you're at. Intelligence is pretty much your amount to remember certain things at a large enough scale.
Mike:
So, retaining, yeah, we said that. Acquiring, retaining, and I think something else in there, a big one I'm missing. Acquiring, retaining, performing, and I guess finding more knowledge, discovering more knowledge, yeah, like the process of it all, the ecosystem of it all. And another thing that struck me with what you said, how your definition was, that it's towards a goal, that it has to be oriented to a goal, it has to be a task-oriented thing. Would you agree with that?
David:
You gotta want to learn it before you would actually gain the intelligence to do it.
Mike:
But to want to learn it, you have to be interested in it, right? You have to want to give a fuck? But how do you know whether you're going to give a fuck about something if you don't know about it? So it is a little bit of a catch-22, isn't it? Because you don't know what you don't know sometimes, and you don't know what you don't give a fuck about.
David:
That's why you should pretty much never turn something up, because you never know what you're gonna get.
False, Misleading and Artificial Content
Mike:
It's actually very important, I think, to not learn things if that material turns out to be complete bullshit, which is my segue into the topic of "AI slop" - everything on the internet becoming shitty and fake and basically devoid of meaning. Like, oh my god, it's a terrible thing to think about because I'm kind of thinking of one of the most classic examples that we encounter in everyday life: queer men bots on Grinder, having a conversation with an entity that you find out later on the other end is not even a real fucking person. The idea of falling in love with something that you find out later on is some AI bot.
Altering Course & Changing Goals
So, intelligence: acquiring, gathering information for goals. But those goals could be ever-changing, and part of intelligence is re-tasking yourself, learning new information, and changing your goals. That's a big one - altering the goal after realizing that your goal is no longer valid.
It reminds me of what industries are going through right now in the context of “culture change.” This notion of evaluating quality. How are we evaluating things, and how do we give somebody feedback in a way that really means something in the real world?
I think it's really funny, and myself included, it's almost like we live in a society that is not used to changing its goals. We are taught to stick to our goals, to stubbornly commit to something that we realize later we don't even know why the fuck we did in the first place.
Seeking an Official Definition of “Intelligence”
Mike:
I could do the easy thing and just go on Google and look up what it tells me that “intelligence” means, and it will give me, more or less, the accepted Merriam-Webster version of the definition. In fact, let's do that. We ought to have some basis of comparison besides my bullshit and Mr. Mystery Man off the screen's bullshit.
I'm kind of failing here at managing all the devices during this broadcast; here's a perfect example of a metric that is completely divorced from any productive meaning in reality: this kind of joke that the more computer screens you have at your desk, the more productive you're being.
(Mike struggles to find the definition)
Mike:
What is it? Wait, whose definition are they giving me? A bunch of intelligence, and then they're doing intelligent server? But I just want to know what's the definition, what does it mean? That's the thesaurus function, I think. No, I'm in crap, I'm getting out of the... Oh god, well, that's kind of ironic, isn't it? So, anyways, as we struggle to discover on the humans here what intelligence truly is, let's have AI answer that question for us! Oh Lord Jesus, we're doomed! Google has AI do everything for you.
(Reading Google's definition of intelligence)
David:
It is “the capacity for acquiring and applying knowledge and skills. It encompasses various cognitive abilities such as reasoning, problem-solving, planning, abstract thinking, comprehension of complex ideas, learning from experience, and adapting it to new skills and situations.”
While there are different theories and models of intelligence, it generally refers to "mental ability to learn, understand, and apply information effectively."
Mike:
I think you said that pretty much how it was, right? I think you covered that in your definition prior to looking it up. You were pretty spot on! The thing that sticks out to me right now: the adaptability part.
What Makes Intelligence “Artificial”?
Mike:
Now we have to apply the term "artificial" to the term "intelligence". And in order to do that, you'd have to sort of distinguish what makes a certain framework of intelligence “artificial” versus real.
David:
Ones and zeros?
Mike:
I mean... is there such a thing as organic intelligence? How do we even grasp what is considered artificial? Because when I look today at the things that are discussed under the hashtag of “artificial intelligence,” I see shit that I think, in the back of my mind, TurboTax did this! TurboTax from 1995, you could lump it into the category of what is considered AI in some definitions.
Mike:
So, let's use the concept of, to the AI con, basically the ability to learn. That's the key. TurboTax didn't learn from you. But it did have processes that you applied. There was the application part, but not the learning part, not the self-improvement part. There's a self-correcting loop, a self-reinforcing loop that sustains that you learn. And learning, that's an open field. And god damn, you mentioned something key: what not to learn. That's going to be more and more important, I swear to God, in the next ten years. What information to completely disregard, because there's weaponized misinformation out there.
Maintaining A Questioning Attitude
Mike:
Self-reinforcement through the learning process, and then sort of... here's a big one, and I talk about this a lot in my other segments about humility. And I'm talking about this in the context of intelligence, meaning knowing when you're wrong, knowing when a goal or a task path in your processes are fatal, or at least when they sort of undermine your core objective.
Okay, we're getting the little wink-wink, nudge-nudge from the library staff. They're closing down soon. Let's look at the comments, I don't know if anybody's watching. Two comments. "Hey Mike, Angela, nice to see you, darling." Thank you for the first comments of this Open Mic Live series!
So, I kind of just like opened up a lot of questions, I guess, in exploring intelligence and what's artificial about it. What's the difference between the intelligence of TurboTax versus the intelligence of a human brain? How can both of those things be in the same label? It kind of reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from an old Egyptian mathematician: "You can tell a man is clever by his answers, you can tell a man is wise by his questions."
Society’s Collective Intelligence
And damn… we have to think about that big-time in our discourse.
We fall for the two-party system, this left versus right duopoly that has poisoned its way into our culture - into how we choose to hang out with people, which opinions to validate and which to completely write off as bullshit. That's part of the important part, too: rejecting bullshit. This is where I would argue the concept of intelligence really comes relevant for us as a society, in this age of limitless information - floods of information and data from who the fuck knows where… What is junk data, what is meaningful information, what is fake and what is real?
What is organic intelligence versus artificial intelligence versus just intelligence being something that is not labeled artificial at all?
Because artificial implies some sort of sense of being completely man-made, that it was man-made in a vacuum from nature. But men are part of nature, mankind is part of nature. And that's kind of the interesting part of this age that we live in, the Anthropocene. This age where humankind collectively controls more of the Earth's processes than the Earth itself. That's a compelling thought.
And humankind as an intelligence, if you will, we've made some big fuckups. And part of what is going to define our generation, if you wanted to call it intelligence, is how we learn, how we admit when we're wrong, how we adapt, how we heal, and how we move on and how we rebuild. I know it's a lot to unpack, but those are the series of steps that I think our country is going to go through as we wrestle not only with artificial intelligence but the intelligence of our own fucking country.
So, my fellow Americans, our fellow Americans, we all here in this damned library - this wonderful, publicly funded place - I implore you to think: What is intelligence?
And don't fall into the trap of handing out trophies to people with 1600 SAT scores. That's not intelligence; that's memorizing facts and knowing what they're going to ask you on a test.
Dazzle me a little bit, bitches! That's intelligence.
Make me laugh! Humor is a big form of intelligence, one that I didn't even touch on really.
But yens are intelligent people, and you know, just get nowhere. As a valedictorian turned homeless guy on the street will tell you, it's not about your fucking A's or F's or 1600s that define being successful in intelligence. It's the ability to gain information and open your eyes, open your ears very well, and shut your fucking mouth and listen, and change, admit when you're wrong, and adapt. Accept the fact that maybe, God forbid, that annoying little cunt there is correct and you're not, and move on and learn and heal. And don't use that word I used just ten minutes ago, kids!
Mike (Host): Live, coming at you live from the Columbus Metropolitan Library, just kidding, in Columbus, Ohio, on Wednesday, the 10th of September, 2025, in the non-Oprah universe after David. This has been Mike George. And wherever you find yourselves this evening, be smart, be good to yourselves, take care of yourselves, and take care of somebody else, even somebody not as intelligent as you! That's fun, yeah.
Welcome to another riveting episode of “Open Mike LIVE” with Mike George. And if you guys forget my name, you'll note that my hardhat has my name written by hand on it. I'm just as bad as y'all at remembering names, faces, and places – well, not places, I'm good at places.
Continuing Discussion of Artificial Intelligence
However, you know, here we are, 2025, and my phone is smarter than me. And my phone is definitely a hell of a lot smarter than y'all, some of y'all bitches out there in Facebook land! So, continuing on with our subject of “artificial Intelligence.” That's what we're doing here, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. We're going to talk about what's intelligent, what's artificial about it, and why I think the term is silly, just altogether silly in the first place.
Just a programming note here - a disclaimer: I would consider myself “artificially intelligent” right now, based on my own definition. You know why? Because I just smoked a big old bowl of cannabis outside, just over at the topiary gardens.
I'm not a big chapstick user, but this Choco-Nana chapstick that I'm holding right now is utterly divine! Find it at your local supermarket or pharmacy or Walmart. No, don't find it on Amazon - don't be that lazy!
All right, let's get started here. We are on a little bit of a schedule. First of all, speaking of schedule, let's look at what the fuck day it is and what time it is, shall we, as we do at the beginning of each episode of “Open Mike LIVE.” It is presently Saturday, 13 September 2025, at about ten until 5:00 pm - exactly 30 minutes following the magical hour of 4:20 pm, otherwise known as 16:20. And boy, I think I actually smoked my weed right on time, too! Right on the hour, right on the minute of 4:20 pm. I'm happy that something finally occurred on schedule, especially that magical occasion of all things. So here I am, “artificially intelligent” because of that.’
How We Defined “Intelligence”
As you might recall from our last episode, we spent a lot of time defining “intelligence,” which opened up a whole set of questions. But we did get some answers. And thank you to David Green for providing a lot of those answers. We agreed that intelligence comprises several critical components: acquiring, retaining, and applying information. We further concluded that it's task-oriented, goal-oriented. Especially in today's age of infinite amounts of information - a lot of which is complete, utter bullshit - a really big part of the task involves having a task and having a direction towards which our collective knowledge guides us.
We didn't quite distinguish clearly on whether it includes awareness. I don't think it does. Intelligence exists outside the scope, I think, of awareness and self-consciousness; however, they are inextricably tied. They're linked; one could say there's sort of a feedback loop between them all.
Benchmarking AI with Existing Tools & Software
One of the interesting questions that I had for y'all that remains unanswered is whether TurboTax would be considered AI according to today's definitions. Because I kind of argue that we're treating “artificial intelligence” as a brand new topic that we've never dealt with before, but we have in some small ways.
For instance, do you guys remember Clippy from Microsoft Word, circa 1995? He was always there to help, clicking along at the top right of your Microsoft Word page while you're frantically trying to finish that essay that should have been turned in yesterday! I mean, he was intelligent enough to at least know when to show up and say he's here to help.
But I guess he wasn't intelligent enough to always know if you needed help, or whether you wanted the help, or really if he was more an obstacle than was helpful. I mean, he was here to at least say he was here to help. And that was sometimes helpful emotionally when it felt like nobody else was there to help. Nonetheless, Clippy wasn't intelligent enough to know when we didn't want his help. So Clippy, I'm sorry, you didn't make the cut. You're not artificially intelligent at all. You're just an annoying little icon I have to close out when I start Microsoft Word. Sorry… I have to be real here.
So, now that Clippy's gone, we have TurboTax. TurboTax was useful. It was a useful array of processes that was carried out simply by typing out your tax information on a spreadsheet. It was extremely useful because I wasn't intelligent enough at the time to know how to make my own Microsoft Access form, so it did that work for me, and I'm grateful for that. It was a tool but nothing I would categorize as “AI.”
And I think a really good example here, beyond this, is a calculator. A calculator is not, in most cases, intelligent. A calculator is not going to learn anything from your usage of it. It already knows how to carry out the basic operations of math.
Remember back when folks thought calculators were going to take people's jobs away? And this isn’t to say that they didn’t. In fact, it's quite interesting to look back at how we did things before calculators. In fact, there's a really good film called Hidden Figures that features the teams of African-American women who manually crunched the numbers for the US space program by hand. I encourage you all to see it!
Contrasting Intelligence with Ignorance
If we're going to talk about intelligence, let's also talk about ignorance. Ignorance is simply the lack of intelligence - and perhaps the associated lack of awareness. We often talk about ignorance as a bad thing, and it’s become something that we use against people. I think that's very sad and often selfish of us. I've done it myself, I'm not trying to say I'm above having done that. But I'm realizing now how ineffective that is at making somebody aware of that ignorance and making them want to change that for the better.
This is important, because I'm seeing this come up in the Queer community when engaging subjects of race, oppression, and intersectionality. And it kind of just became this stupid little fight among ourselves of who had it worst - the "oppression Olympics" essentially. And then you look on the other side and you see white people doing it, and it's just disgraceful sometimes to see. Everything's become about identity politics, which is a synonym for the oppression Olympics.
It forces us to engage in a way that is all about "me," my problems, my issues, my struggles - rather than a way that serves to bring people together.
While that's part of the story, yes, we have to remember that in a country like ours, where you have 300 million voices, there has to be some way to sort all that out.
Dispelling Ignorance with Civil Discourse
How do we get somebody that we're talking to to not be a racist? How do we enlighten people a little bit in a way that doesn't piss them off? I've personally adopted a set of 4 core values for talking to people.
One: Respect. That's a very simple one.
Two: Do no harm. Again, I think that one kind of explains itself.
Three: And I think this one is the one that we miss the most often, but I propose it to be: Don't assume. Now, that one's kind of a funny little joke because we all know that we do assume.
So, I say don't assume, but knowing that you're going to assume. When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me. Let's be honest, not everybody has the time to check everything. So what you have to do is assume, but you have to know where those assumptions end. That's the key. You have to first of all be aware of your assumptions. And you have to know your blind spots a little bit.
And that leads me to number four here, on my core values of proper civil discourse/etiquette: Do assume positive intention in others. Let me say that one again: assume positive intention in others. Now I know that almost sounds like it directly contradicts point number three, but if we sort of listen closely, you'll remember that I said we're going to assume anyways. Nothing to be ashamed of. I'm a lazy bitch, all right? If I can do something with the least amount of effort possible, I'm going to choose that. You get to assume positive intention in people, and that's a nice thing to assume. Most people, even the really allegedly evil ones, want to be good. We all consider ourselves the good guy naturally.
But there are some people that are genuinely evil bitches, evil cunts. And at the point in which your assumption about them is proven true, then that's the point at which you get the fuck out of there, as in the wise words of Whoopi Goldberg: "Oh, I gotta make sure you're in danger, girl"! Don't even fucking bother with the douchebag, because they're just trying to piss you off. Don't engage in that. Reject it altogether. Don't tolerate that type of behavior, because that violates rule number one, which is the respect thing. That's the point at which they're not respecting you. So get the fuck away from that shit, girl!
Feeling Artificially Intelligent
So, I'm high as fuck right now, if I'm being very honest. I've already told you in the last broadcast that I don't believe in the concept of “artificial intelligence,” because based on the definition of “intelligence,” how can there be a distinction made between what's artificial and what's real about it? I can sort of use the definition here in context of me being stoned as fuck and therefore being the most artificially intelligent thing in this library!
Thank you for listening in on this episode of “Open Mike LIVE,” part 2 of a series on artificial intelligence (AI) on this beautiful Saturday afternoon, the 13th of September 2025, in non-Oprah universe number 476. This has been Mike George here. Get the fuck outside! It's beautiful here in Columbus, Ohio, and I'm going to take advantage of this weather. Take care of yourselves, and take care of somebody else.
