Computers are the wrong smartness.

From Isaac Asimov’s 1975 short story “Point of View,” talking about Multivac, a malfunctioning computer:

“…if Multivac were as smart as a man, we could talk to it and find out what was wrong no matter how complicated it was. If it were as dumb as a machine, it would go wrong in simple ways that we could catch easily. The trouble is, it’s half-smart, like an idiot. It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong. And that’s the wrong smartness.”

That accurately describes most computers and software today, almost 40 years later: they’re the wrong smartness.