(f)AI(rytale):The Emperors New App

Re-warming an old warning for our artificially unintelligent times.

Illustration Credit: Asha TP

You may have heard this one before.

In a far away land a bit like this one, there was an Emperor who didn’t feel quite as confident or clever as he liked to project.

(After all he was a human being - which doesn’t fit easily with being an “Emperor”)

One day some tinker-tailors turned up in the Emperor’s court. Actually there were rather a lot of them - more like tinker-tailor-lobbyists. They wore relaxed casual suits and sneakers and they seemed pretty hip.

They were associated with a new kind of tech called ‘generative clevertech’. They claimed their ‘clevertech’ was really the cleverest tech that there has ever been and that if you used clevertech right you too could be incredibly clever.

They showed the Emperor some of the whizzy things generative clevertech could do: - it could write speeches, tell some funny jokes, organise the court a bit better, replace the Lord Chancellor and even help the treasury staff by making budgets a little easier to make.

The Emperor played around with a few clevertech apps. He laughed at the jokes. He found it was actually comfortable to wear sneakers. He began to feel a little bit cleverer.

“it’s good eh?” said one of the tinker-tailor-lobbyists. “Imagine if you let it help you run the whole country? I mean.. it IS that clever. You could even ask it how to run the country in a clever way. It probably has some clever ideas”

That seemed like a clever idea indeed, so the Emperor asked the clevertech app and it had a few suggestions: It suggested the Emperor could get the Health Minister to use clevertech to run all the hospitals more efficiently. He could ask the Agriculture Minister to use it to tell farmers how to be more clever in growing food. Heck, you could even tell the schools to let all the kids each have a bit of clevertech so that the whole country becomes really clever and that would help the economy… somehow.

“Oh and your defence department” said one of the tinker-tailor-lobbyists looking over his shoulder. “They are really going to need clevertech to be cleverer than your enemies because unfortunately ..sorry to tell you this.. but your enemies are already using clevertech to work out how to undermine and attack your country”

“Wait!” said the Emperor, now quite alarmed. “They are? That’s serious - I’m glad you warned me. This isn’t just a cool thing that tells clever jokes.. This is actually pretty important”.

“I’d say” said the tinker-tailor-lobbyist suddenly looking a little less casual and leaning in with a worried look. “The thing is, if your enemies use it the wrong way this clevertech could be pretty nasty. It could destroy everything. It kinda needs a clever guy like you to use it better and quicker and cleverer than the bad guys - you know?, both to do the good things and for stopping the really bad uses of clevertech. “

The Emperor got it immediately. This mattered. He was glad he’d met these cool tinker-tailor-lobbyist dudes, They might have just saved everything. “Ok,” said the Emperor - feeling more certain and important than he’d ever felt, “We are going all in on this clevertech thing. I mean ALL IN!!”. He even made up an acronym for ‘All In’: A.I. That felt pretty clever.

First he asked the clevertech app to help him rearrange the budgets so he had the money to buy clevertech. The clevertech app suggested that he stop giving money to foreign aid. “You are going to need to buy a lot of clevertech to get up to speed here” explained the clevertech tinker-tailor-lobbyists “ which will be a little pricey. But hey! consider it a security expense. In fact you might want to give a bit more money to the military too so the generals can be first to buy lots of clevertech”

Buying clevertech for the treasury, the health department, the education department, the king’s wardrobe, the energy minister and the cooks all came next. “Phew, This is a lot to organize.“ thought the Emperor. Luckily the tinker-tailor-lobbyists always seemed to be at hand with good ideas to help him out “Appoint an ‘All In” minister to do this work.” they suggested. “He doesn’t need to be too clever himself because he can just follow instructions from the clevertech app.”

There was an out-of-work journalist hanging around the court. He had sold the Emperor some paintings in the past that he quite liked. “How about you?” asked the Emperor tapping the journalist to be his new ‘All In’ (AI) Minister. “Cool” said the journalist, hurriedly combing his hair and wondering if he had any casual suits to wear.

The Emperor and his new AI minister were soon in full flow of organizing what they grandly called the ‘Clevertech All In (AI) Revolution’ for the court and country. Everyone in the court realized they quickly had to get on board (“All in”, right?) with this new obsession by the Emperor . After all he was the boss and it was the cleverest tech there had ever been and they didn’t want to look stupid.

Several courtiers got hold of clevertech apps and asked the apps to come up with ideas for how they could use clevertech to deal with labour costs, sell more things and to organise the court arts concert that evening. They brought each of these things to the Emperor to show him they were being clever and “All In” too. Each time someone did so it became more and more obvious to the Emperor that the court and the country really needed clevertech - like lots of it - especially for that whole thing about keeping ahead of their enemies.

One of the tinker-tailor-lobbyists had explained to the Emperor and the court in general that the country needed to amp up things even more to reach a state of “general cleverness” before an enemy country managed that first. “We hear they are even working on ‘super-cleverness’ explained that tinker-tailor-lobbyist in awed tones. “We need to get to super-cleverness first” expressed the Emperor, feeling resolute and clever.

“Er.. thing is..” said one of the tinker-tailer-lobbyists looking a bit sheepish, “With all this extra AI clevertech activity happening here, now we are sort of running out of clevertech. We are going to need a whole lot more clevertech factories full of expensive clevertech computers running full time. We’ve got people who will pay for them and sell them- clever bankers and all that - but we might need subsidies and land. And oh there’s getting hold of the energy, the water and the metals. Clevertech is built out of energy and water and metals, don’t you know?

“Oh.. I didn’t know that.” thought the Emperor. And then, realizing he was supposed to look clever, said “Yes, of course no problem. Go ahead and build lots more clevertech factories across my empire. Dig out more metals! Pump more water! Amp up the energy production! - Oil! Coal! Gas! Nuclear! whatever it takes. This is serious. We need to stay cleverer and ahead of our enemies. All In!”

Outside the court, in the streets of the city, the ordinary citizens couldn’t help but notice all this frantic ‘All In’ clevertech activity suddenly going on. The kids at school were being sent home with clevertech apps. The hospitals were laying off doctors and nurses so that they could have clevertech do the doctoring and nursing instead. The border police had suddenly got very good at finding foreigners who looked different and rounding them up . The clevertech tinker-tailor-lobbyists had also been fanning out from court to talk with the bosses in the factories and the shops. So suddenly workers found that they too were being expected to do whatever a clevertech app said they should be doing.

Beyond the city, rivers were being redirected to cool down the new clevertech factories that were being built at the edge of town. These huge factories were very noisy and billowed pollution from the energy turbines - because clevertech, it turned out, needed a lot of energy and all they had on hand was smoky, noisy coal, oil and gas.

A few people discovered there were some other types of clevertech factories where poor people were being badly paid to tell the clever tech exactly what to say in the first place.

“Wait - you mean it’s not actually clever by itself?!” people asked incredulously.

It turned out the clevertech needed to keep being told what to say and not to say and what to do and draw. The artists found out that clevertech was stealing their pictures and pretending it had made them itself. The musicians found the same thing was happening with their music, the farmers found the same thing with their seeds.

The further you got away from the court into the far reaches of the kingdom the clearer it was that clevertech was mostly just a network of copying machines organized to steal other peoples words, ideas , songs, seeds and labour and present it as if it was some sort of new clever thing to the court.

In one of the villages where the air was smoky from the clevertech factories , where the water had dried up because it was all going to clevertech factories and what rivers were left had been polluted by a spill from the now frantic metal mines …. in that village a young girl had had enough.

She saw how the clevertech apps they sent home from school were not in fact making her friends any cleverer - just sort of lazier and finding it harder to think for themselves. She had watched helplessly how one of her friends had become horribly addicted to asking the clevertech apps questions again and again until he got really depressed and committed suicide. Ugh!

She saw that about a third of the time the clevertech apps were just sort of making things up and getting their facts wrong. She didn’t quite understand how these apps that took away her friend and spouted lies were of any help or fun or meaningful or hopeful to her life whatsoever.

“This is bullshit” said the young girl exasperated. “This isn’t clevertech - it’s stupid tech: dumb-and-stupid overhyped bullshit tech! I’m gonna go to the court and tell that foolish Emperor with his ‘All In’ slogan to just.. stop it”.

She grabbed an old bed sheet and some paint and painted up a banner. It read “Clevertech is Bullshit!”.

It wasn’t polite or eloquent or nuanced or clever. But it was true.

Setting out, carrying her banner, she left her home. She took a breath of air, found a trickle of clean water to fill her bottle and set off for the court holding her banner high. As she walked people looked up from their clevertech apps.

Some were puzzled but a lot smiled. They looked at the smoky air and the dried up stream and the depressed kids and some of them shook their heads and turned off their apps. Some of them even grabbed their own banners and joined in beside her: “It’s not clevertech, it’s stupidtech” , “It’s not clever if I can’t breathe”, “All In? We’re out!” “The Emperor has no clue!”.

Back at court the Emperor and his AI Minister were beginning to sweat. They had used up all the gold coins in the treasury buying clevertech and setting up new clevertech factories. They now had nothing to pay for all the hospital costs of people who were having health problems or were hungry and dying from thirst because the water had been diverted away from agriculture and poorer communities.

Word had got to the court about the marching army of angry ‘stupidtech’ activists who were coming. The generals said their clevertech apps suggested that the clever thing to do was to mow them all down with machine guns before they arrived in the city. The Emperor didn’t feel good about this clever idea so he was dragging his feet on approving it.

In the city people were getting restless because many didn’t have jobs anymore or they had been fired and re-hired for less money to correct the clevertech when it went wrong or said offensive things. . Some of the banks had collapsed because they lent out too much money for building clevertech factories. The tinker-tailor-lobbyists meanwhile seemed to have all become scarce. Word was that they had built a few bunkers in New Zealand where they were having a huge blowout party - or hiding away - nobody quite knew.

“Have we reached general cleverness yet?” asked the AI Minister sounding very alarmed. “If we haven’t we are going to need a lot more money and energy and water and metals for a lot more clevertech. Especially the energy.. the power grid is really overloading and..,,”

Suddenly all the lights in the court went out.

All the clevertech apps suddenly stopped working.

Everything was in darkness and confusion and somewhere outside in the distance was the faint sound of people marching - of people chanting and getting closer and closer.

The Emperor listened in the darkness, in the sudden unusual quiet, to the singsong chanting of the voices as they got closer. He could make out sentences:

“Unplug the empire! Turn off the apps! We want our minds and communities back!”

“its not clever! its not cool!. Clevertech’s for chumps and fools.”

And he realized.. he really was.

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If you enjoyed this fable please pass it on and share it far and wide. We all need to start calling bullshit on the toxic claims of the ‘Empire of AI’.

Generative AI is artificial but it ain’t intelligent.

• You may also enjoy another re-purposed tech fairytale that I wrote a few years ago called Jack and The Cloud Giant - Also available as a short audio story.