We spend endless hours debating the risks of artificial intelligence. Will it replace our jobs? Will it become self-aware? Will it one day decide that humans are an inefficient use of carbon and politely show us the exit?

Maybe. Maybe not. But one thing is already clear: natural stupidity got there first.

Just look around.

• Endless wars fought over nothing, dressed up as religion but really powered by politics and economics.
• People still shouting at strangers on the internet as if victory in a comment thread will change the world.
• Owners microwaving their dogs to dry them, despite every manual begging them not to.
• MAGA rallies in the US, a political movement so absurd it feels like satire written by someone who gave up halfway.
• And right here in my own duck pond, endless debates about Russians coming, buying billion-dollar rocket systems without the budget to train anyone to use them, all while Ukrainian drones buzz over our airports as if to say: “Defenseless, much?”

The danger is not that machines will outsmart us. The danger is that we keep out-dumbing ourselves.

AI, at its core, is nothing more than a mirror. It learns from what we feed it. And when we shovel in bias, nonsense, and half-baked logic, what comes out the other side is not intelligence at all but a machine with a PhD in our collective stupidity.

AI does not need to be brilliant to beat us. It just needs to be a little less stupid.