No to an AI President

Should AI run on the presidential ballot alongside Trump and Harris?

In a piece called “In An Increasingly Complex World, Is It Time For An AI President?” Forbes considers it. In 2016 there was a Watson for President campaign. Watson was the IBM AI software that beat the world’s best players on the quiz show Jeopardy!

Advocates for AI leadership often derive their understanding of AI from blog posts written by others who are equally uninformed. When it comes to command and creative decision-making, AI is and will remain clueless.

Calvin and Hobbes

To see the need for creativity in winning conflicts, we need look no farther than the classic comic strip Calvin and Hobbes (July 1, 1986).

Calvin, drawing on his entire knowledge of the history of warfare, challenges Hobbes. He boasts “You see Hobbes, I have a water balloon and you don’t. I therefore have offensive superiority, so you have to do what I say.”

Hobbes becomes creative outside of Calvin’s experience. He responds “I think I’ll take this stick and poke your balloon.”

The final cartoon panel shows Calvin drenched with the water from his own balloon. He mutters “That’s the trouble with weapons technology. It becomes obsolete so quickly.”

As Hobbes demonstrates, innovation can trump the entrenched dogma of the past. AI can’t.

Lessons From History

Just like a CEO or a military commander must handle unprecedented situations, a U.S. president faces scenarios never encountered before. Think the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 9/11 attacks, and the COVID pandemic.

AI can only react to scenarios it has previously encountered. While AI can analyze historical data and make predictions based on past events, for new events not yet seen, it lacks the ability to think outside the box.

This is one reason why CEOs and top coaches get the big bucks — they bring innovative thinking that AI cannot.

History is rich with examples of creative thinking overcoming entrenched status quo. In 218 B.C., Rome's military and naval power was unmatched, making it seem they were invincible. However, the Carthaginian commander Hannibal acted outside the box. He defied expectations by leading his troops, including elephants, across the Alps into northern Italy.

This daring strategy brought the war directly to the heart of the Roman Republic and remains one of the most renowned feats in ancient military history. Given history to that point, AI would never have suggested such a move to Hannibal.

Sun Tzu, author of the military classic The Art of War, notes that “all warfare is based on deception.” In military strategy, innovative actions can deceive successfully. For example, Alexander the Great’s army used the formidable phalanx to win battles.

Pharnuches, one of Alexander the Great’s generals, was at a loss on how to combat mounted Scythian warriors who ignored his way of fighting. They randomly swarmed his phalanx and he lost the battle.

Creative strategies can win wars. Frederick the Great famously declared, "Everything which the enemy least expects will succeed the best."

Using AI trained on historical data, there are no unexpected strategies. AI cannot be creative.

This principle extends to unforeseen technology that influences wartime outcomes. During World War II, advancements such as radar, the atomic bomb, the Norden bombsight, and the decryption of the Nazi Enigma code all played crucial roles in shortening the conflict.

Leadership had to adapt to best use these unforeseen innovations.

Outside-the-box innovation works in sports. In 1963, Cassius Clay (later known as Muhammad Ali) faced "Big Bear" Sonny Liston in a boxing world dominated by nose-to-nose slugging. Ali defied this norm with a creative alternative. He used evasion and taunting to tire out his opponents.

This innovative technique, called "rope-a-dope," was highly effective. By the seventh round, Liston was so exhausted that he refused to leave his corner and continue the fight, unable to counter Ali's new boxing strategy.

Creativity

Leadership demands creativity, yet AI has not yet demonstrated creativity as defined by the Lovelace test: AI operates within the boundaries of the intent and explanation of the programmer, and the data the AI was trained on. While results can be surprising, there is no innovation or creativity.

In leadership roles like U.S, president, AI, if used, should be restricted to the role of adviser, but should never be in charge.

MIT’s Patrick D. Wall sums the limitations of AI up nicely.

“When you consider the great new ideas produced by men like Newton and Darwin and Galileo, you’ll find, initially, they had to throw away the old rules that they grew up with. Now machines do what they’ve been told to do. They obey the rules that have been fed into them by man. And we know of no machines at present that have means of overcoming this limitation.”

And we still don’t. And as I outline in my book Non-Computable You, we never will.

Dr. Wall was ahead of his time. His observation was made in 1961.