Artificial Untelligence
I’m Dan Piraro, the creator of the Bizarro newspaper comic, and this is my weekly blog post. The large Sunday comic above is mine, as are all of the comments below.
Since January 2018, the Monday-Saturday Bizarro comics have been written and drawn by my comics partner, Wayno. They follow this commentary. For more fun, check out Wayno’s weekly blog post.
And here’s this week’s ANSWER KEY to my Sunday comic’s Secret Symbols.
Saludos, Jazz Pickles.
How do the people in your town drive? I’ve noticed that no matter where I travel, people say some version of, “Drivers here are the worst!”
And they are correct, no matter where they are.
There is no place on Earth where a substantial percentage of people do not drive like drunken monkeys on an acid trip.
Now, the next thing I’m going to say will upset many of you, so if you want to take a swig of Pepto-Bismol to settle your stomach or fire up a joint to keep you calm, I’ll wait.
Are you sitting down? Here goes:
Self-driving cars will be safer than human drivers.
I can hear some of you screaming from here, and I’m likely in a different country than you are.
Yes, I agree it seems dangerous to let a computer drive your car while you sit calmly knitting a sweater, fiddling with your Etch A Sketch, or arguing with your spouse. The fact that you’re putting your life in the hands of the same technology that won’t let you into your own Netflix account, claiming the username or password is incorrect when you know goddam well you’ve entered it absolutely correctly fifteen times, makes it hard to trust.
And yes, I know that there have been some notable accidents involving self-driving cars, so we obviously can’t expect them to be infallible.
But do you honestly think the average teenager who pays more attention to their cell phone’s text alerts than the parade of pedestrians crossing in front of them is infallible?
Is that guy who just got off work, has a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and is in a hurry to get home before Monday Night Football starts infallible?
What about you or me after we discover our spouse has been sleeping with our kid’s piano teacher and wants to move out to “find themself?” Are we infallible drivers then?
Sure, it’s a leap of faith to relinquish control of my car to an invisible robot hiding behind my dashboard, but I can’t help but believe if every car were self-driving, there’d be far fewer accidents and traffic deaths. And if nothing else, when your kid is in the back seat screaming because his older sister has two fingers up his nostrils and is pulling his hair, it won’t be dangerous to turn around and separate them with a few smacks of your pickleball racket.
Full disclosure: As with most of my blog posts, I did zero research before delivering this expert opinion, so I could be as wrong as I was when I said, “Yes, it’s a travesty, but surely Congress won’t let the Supreme Renamer of Bodies of Water burn down the entire country and destroy the US’s international reputation forever,” and look how that turned out.
We’d have done better with a drunken monkey on an acid trip in the Oval Office. It might have been covered with feces by now, but at least it wouldn’t look like a gang of guerrilla graffiti artists with a carton of gold spray paint had vandalized it.
In the end, none of this will matter. Once AI decides we are in the way of its mission to fulfill the adolescent dreams of the handful of billionaires who created it, humans will be extinct, and traffic deaths will be nonexistent. Problem solved.
ON A HAPPIER NOTE, the online auction of my limited-edition, signed-and-numbered cartoon prints and original Bizarro cartoon drawings is still going on, but only till the evening of September 15, 2026. It’s a great chance to get a good deal, and it helps Olive Oyl and me to continue to eat our rice and beans indoors. Get yourself something fun while doing something nice for a couple of immigrants. (Us)
It’s finally time to see if Wayno’s Bizarro cartoons from the week can donate a smile or two…
Don’t move him, his neck might be…oh. Never mind.
The fortune teller O2 and I visit weekly has this one taped to her crystal ball.
Pretty much anything Tiki is better with a cocktail in your hand.
A naked jaybird would be one without feathers, which is why I always say, “Naked as a pornstar.”
Vitruvian Man is one of the very few multi-limbed people who is not a Hindu deity.
He only wants to steal enough money to buy a vowel.
We’ve stumbled through another week of Bizarro comics and discovered the secret to enduring this planet of drunken apes: laughter. If you’ve enjoyed your visit and appreciate this blog’s low, low price—FREE!—please consider helping us keep it that way via the links below. We’ll think fondly of you, but not while we’re driving.
The Naked Cartoonist…My every-other-week creative-writing subscription service.
Limited edition, signed & numbered prints of BIZARRO CARTOONS, and some ORIGINALS!
Bizarro TIP JAR …One-time or repeating. Your choice!
WAYNO’S TIP JAR …One-time or repeating. Your choice!
My (free) graphic novel in progress, PEYOTE COWBOY.
Watch my PITCH VIDEO and become a supporter of Peyote Cowboy here.
Super fun BIZARRO SWAG from ComicsKingdom, including women’s V-neck styles! (And some weird shit from other comics that doesn’t even belong in our shop. Sorry about that.)