An awful suspicion is dawning that rather than just replacing humans by being more efficient, artificial intelligence (AI) might also show them up for the wretched, self-deluding egomaniacs they so often are.
Some of this year’s “tell-all” books have been so incompetent in their mendacity, it’s beginning to look as though the only reliable biographies and memoirs in future will be those penned by chatbots on humans’ behalf. At least bots can find a few facts to rub together, and AI so far has resisted developing grudges and vendettas.
Omid Scobie’s recent swingeing hatchet job on the British monarchy, Endgame, would be merely a matter of taste were it not so vaingloriously ludicrous. No AI program could have generated King Charles making staff iron his shoe laces. No bot would be so factually challenged as to “think” any reader who has ever worn lace-up shoes would believe it. Vanishingly few modern laces are made of crinkle-able fibre; the bespoke brogues Charles gets about in are not among shoes that feature them. Even a light steaming would be ruinous.
Nor would a bot have allowed the “accidental” publishing in Scobie’s Dutch edition of the identities of the two royals alleged to have queried the likely skin colour of Prince Harry and Meghan’s then-unborn baby. Scobie blamed the translator, saying naughty Netherlanders rewrote his prose. Again, a bot would “know” better how translators operate. It would also anticipate, given the embarrassing expense of the Dutch edition’s withdrawal from shelves, that an investigation would find the text given to the translator did indeed include the names. Funny sort of accident, that.
Naturally, Harry’s self-pitying opus, Spare, would have been edited down to a jolly-hockey-sticks leaflet had a bot been in charge. AI has more “sense” than to let humans expose themselves to such ridicule.
Bots could also countermand the solicitations of pity that human-generated tell-all books can’t seem to help. Even Barbra Streisand’s sumptuously generous memoir has an absolute clanger: “I haven’t had much fun in my life, to tell you the truth.” She’s a thumping good actor, but truly? The joy with which she belted out all those timeless songs suggested a bit of enjoyment was being had – not to mention getting to kiss Robert Redford and Omar Sharif. Was she really secretly going, “Well, this is boring”? As reviewers have pointed out, she was a foundation cause of the fun-spanning decades, starting with her 1960s breakout movie, ahem … Funny Girl.
A bot editor would have supervened to say that perhaps Streisand was too self-disciplined and cautious throughout her life and now realises she could have coasted more and worried less.
However, no bot editor would have generated a single counter-suggestion given the text of former Tory minister Rory Stewart’s Politics on the Edge. The explorer, academic, charity campaigner and podcaster’s memoir of Westminster politics from the Cameron to the Johnson era writes unsparingly factually. AI might have counselled against disclosing his severe bouts of despair, but given the inanity, hypocrisy and cynicism Stewart narrates, his reactive self-loathing provides a counterbalance.
A bot might have mandated a cover warning: “No recent politico should look themselves up in the index without first seeking medical advice.”
Similarly, the Mr Spock-like bot logic circuits might have cautioned former UK prime minister Theresa May against her doggedly high-minded analysis of Britain’s flawed public institutions and processes in An Abuse of Power. “As I (a mere bot) understand human kindness, wouldn’t it be compassionate not to remind those who deemed you the worst prime minister ever about what happened next?”
All things considered, bots would greatly improve the quality and constructiveness of humans’ tell-all books.
This needn’t be a kill-joy development. We’d have the bots’ subsequent accounts of the various humans’ resistance to anti-vanity editing to look forward to.
