Unintelligent Design

Documenting A.I. Art Program's Struggles with Boat Design

The impending arrival of technological singularity and the potential dangers of runaway A.I. have been well documented. While it’s possible A.I. poses a profound risk to society, including its automating millions of people out of their jobs, if our little test below is any indication, yacht designers might be safe for a while yet.

We asked the Dall-E program to draw us a few small-boat technical sketches. Here are the results:

We asked for a sleep-board rowboat of about 19 feet. A.I. took it all quite literally, but seemed to miss on the length and a number of details. Will there be room for two of every animal?

Here we tried again for the sleep-aboard rowboat, emphasizing the “cabin” part. A.I. added an interesting split-level shanty house with partial taffrail and what looks like an electrical cord from the transom. The inboard rudder and skeg arrangement is unusual as well. Our artificial designer was a wee ambitious on the “rowboat” part. I think I’d let my cousin Tim do the rowing if we took this one for a cruise.