Technology Forum

Today I realized I’ve been relating to AI all wrong. I’m going to call my AI Rain Man , like the movie. In Rain Man , Dustin Hoffman plays Raymond—an autistic savant. He can do things that look like magic, especially with numbers. His brother Charlie (Tom Cruise) starts out frustrated, then realizes Raymond has a skill that can “win” in Vegas—counting cards, recalling patterns, never missing a beat. Charlie tries to leverage that. But the movie doesn’t end with Charlie becoming rich. It ends with a different kind of turning point: Charlie stops seeing Raymond primarily as a “win”—a way to beat Vegas—and starts reckoning with the full reality of who Raymond is, including limits that don’t disappear just because the gift is impressive. That’s the best analogy I’ve found for AI— with one crucial difference: AI isn’t a person. So the shift isn’t from “tool” to “person.” The shift is from “jackpot fantasy” to honest appraisal . You stop seeing only the win side—the card-counting moments, t...