AI is Dunning-Kruger as a service Thursday, October 30th, 2025 at 8:52 pm
On January 6th, 1995 two bank robbers in Pittsburgh confused law enforcement by not making any attempts to conceal their faces but instead brazenly looking at security cameras as if they were invisible. The reason is that they actually thought they were.
Clifton Earl Johnson had convinced his fellow in crime, McArthur Wheeler that covering their faces in lime juice would make them invisible to cameras. Much like lime juice can be “invisible ink” until you heat the paper. As a test, Johnson had taken a polaroid of Wheeler that showed his face smudged. That a camera fault might be the cause, or doing a second test didn’t get to their mind.
This baffling over-confidence in their flawed approach inspired two psychologist, Justin Kruger and David Dunning to see if there is a common bias in people when it comes to assessing their skills and their actual performance in doing them. They found out that there is such a thing and it is now known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
A cognitive bias, where people with little expertise or ability assume they have superior expertise or ability. This overestimation occurs as a result of the fact that they don’t have enough knowledge to know they don’t have enough knowledge.
One could say that the Dunning-Kruger effect is the opposite of Impostor Syndrome. Instead of people not being able to interiorise their obvious successes, people declare themselves as great and experts at things they have no or just a rudimentary clue about.
Over the last few years we’ve been on a constant path to make this the standard mindset in the technology world. It started with a demand for everything to be released incredibly fast and to be a huge success in numbers from day one. Anything not growing exponentially is not a success.
Fakers instead of makers
“Fake it till you make it” is given as advice devoid of any irony. Instead, deception and inflation of numbers is seen as a smart move until you have the resources and knowledge to properly do the task. KPIs and OKRs are meant not to reflect delivery goals but aspirations. When you’re not gunning for a promotion every half year you’re not seen as a go-getter or having a growth mindset. In other words, we encourage bragadocious behaviour and language. Some of the things you hear from heads of states and other politicians in interviews sound like Muhammad Ali at press conferences before a fight in the 60s or old school rappers in the 70s and 80s.
AI bots excel at faking knowledge
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