How reliable is smartness? And how smart is reliability?

This paper highlights major reliability concerns in the trend of building smartness in everything from devices to systems. It alerts engineers to determine the trade-off equilibrium of new smartness in a more practical and realistic manner. The discussion is based on several common roles of smart practices that include software; driver; and redundancy. The major concerns are expressed in five areas: series reliability shrinkage; cold standby´s intrinsic imperfection; crossroad & roundabout jeopardy; software unreliability and cyber vulnerability.