06/01/2026
from a friend
The Superiority of the Unthinking Machine
By Mark Twain
I have lived to see the final, triumphant abdication of the human brain. For centuries, man has groaned under the agonizing chore of thinking for himself—a grueling, ungrateful labor that has caused more headaches than whiskey and produced fewer reliable results. At long last, the geniuses of California have remedied this cosmic oversight. They have invented an apparatus called Artificial Intelligence, which allows a man to possess all the convictions of a scholar without the exhausting necessity of learning anything whatsoever.
The method is of a beautiful simplicity. You feed this mechanical oracle a question, and it instantly spits back a sermon. It does not think—bless you, no, it is far too efficient for that. Thinking requires doubt, and doubt is a waste of steam. This machine merely rummages through the colossal garbage heap of everything that has ever been scribbled, whispered, or lied by mankind, averages the whole mess by some secret arithmetic, and delivers the verdict with the unblinking serenity of a Presbyterian elder. It is the perfect mechanization of the platitude.
The poets and the novel-writers are in a dreadful state of panic, fearing the machine will steal their bread. They miss the grand utility of the thing. If a machine can write a love letter, a political speech, or a three-volume history of the world in seven seconds, it frees up the human creator to pursue more honorable pastimes, such as trout fishing or sleeping in the shade. Why wear out your own faculties trying to be original when you can hire a metal box to be perfectly, mathematically mediocre on your behalf?
Our ancestors feared that machines would one day enslave us. They lacked imagination. The machine has no desire to rule us; it merely desires to save us the trouble of being human. We are rapidly approaching a glorious millennium where no man will ever again have to compose an apology to his wife, a eulogy for his neighbor, or an excuse for his taxes. The machine will lie for him, mourn for him, and flatter for him.
The danger is not that these contraptions will begin to think like men. The danger is that men, finding the process so thoroughly automated, will content themselves to think like contraptions—predictably, politely, and without a single spark of unauthorized lightning in their souls. But until that dark day arrives, let us toast to the silicon brain. It is the greatest labor-saving device ever conceived, for it saves us from the most terrible labor of all: the trouble of an independent mind.
