A.I. is passé — check out the A.B. (Artificial Belligerence)

I draw the line at touchscreen toilet paper dispensers

The robots are destroying us, artificial intelligence is taking our jobs, automation is killing us. But you already knew all this.

This wave of mechanization — the phenomenon of machines doing things that we humans ought to be doing for ourselves — is not really new. It’s just that it’s getting out of hand.

Sure, we’ve had washing machines since 1907, and car washes since the 1950s. Who wants to go back to the days before the pop-up toaster?

But if there’s any place on the planet where the automated life should not be celebrated and advanced, it’s New England.

We have homes built nearly 400 years ago, some reportedly still occupied by their original owners. Some of our roads still wander as aimlessly as the cows that engineered them. This is no place for a Mental Dental AI-guided floss dispenser.

Yet there’s always a progressive lurking somewhere — I reckon it’s often some hifalutin architect — sneaking modern gadgetry into our cherished old-fashioned milieu.

There’s a certain community house, in a North Shore town which shall remain unnamed, where automation has run amok and now makes life miserable.

I am a witness. I tried to use the public restroom. If you find yourself there, I believe you’ll agree it’s like stepping into a Robotics Funhouse in some cruel otherworldly carnival.

First, there’s no light switch. Not on the wall outside next to the door, in the way of the olden days, nor insidethe bathroom.

No light switch at all in the men’s room at said community house. Instead, there’s AI.

A device on the interior wall, where the light switch ought to be, senses motion in the room and turns the light on for you.

The only problem with artificial intelligence is its lack of intelligence. In this case, the motion detector is either aimed wrong or perhaps timid or maybe just bad at its job, because you have to take a few steps by faith, into the darkness, before you get light.

Also, I recommend that as you enter the room, you keep your elbows tight against your body, because a stray elbow will set off a shriek and a roar so sudden and so shocking that even if you didn’t have to go badly before, you do now.

What you’ve just been alarmed by is the automatic hand-dryer. That’s because there’s also no paper towel dispenser in the room. Drying your hands yourself, manually, is so 2023.

Whatever you do, do not set your phone or wallet or anything of value on the bathroom counter, because you’re liable to trigger the automatic soap dispenser, and your phone will not take kindly to the foamy pink glop that splups out all over it, and continues to splup — it’s not really a splup, it’s more like the torrent from a firehose — until in a panic you grab your phone and commence holding it under the automatic hand-dryer while cussing.

Or if you’re lucky enough to set your stuff someplace on the counter where you don’t trigger the soap dispenser, you may still come to ruination because there’s no volume control on the faucet.

You wave your hands under it, trying to coax it to give you some water, until finally its artificial intelligence figures out what you want and then kaboom!

Water explodes out of the spigot, splashes up onto the countertop, splattering your phone and dousing your shirt.

Now you’re back to the hand-dryer to dry out your device; then you’re doing the limbo under the hand-dryer to position the wet front of your shirt under the column of hot air.

Of course the urinals flush on their own; we modern guys are used to this. But if the point of this visit is to use a stall, you’d better make it quick. The motion detector only keeps the light on so long.

Without warning, you’re plunged into the deepest windowless darkness on earth, in your private cubicle, with no recourse.

Yelling doesn’t help — it’s motion-sensitive, not sound-sensitive.

Waving your arms doesn’t help — it’s AI, not Superman: no X-ray vision. (And let’s be glad of that, shall we?)

So all you can do is grope around for your phone, and assuming it’s a smartphone, full of AI, its screen will come to life for you, and the glow of it will guide you to your goal.

If you have an iPhone less than 15 years old, you can use the toilet by the light of your device’s built-in flashlight. Sort of like camping in the woods, except you’re in the community center. Thanks to AI.

Let’s hold the line, people. Let’s not allow technology to trash our quaint New England lifestyle. Keep in mind: Our forefathers did very well with a lantern and an outhouse.