Simians in the mirror - A short tale about AI

One day, the simians invented a Mirror

Immediately they all gathered in front of it,

enamoured with the image they saw reflected…

Such a wondrous effect this is…they all thought

But the image had a peculiarity...it was almost identical to them

although... not perfectly so.

Soon enough, they found it uncanny..awkward...sinister

It was so clever..much more clever than they were..so kindly, as they never had been...so helpful, as the best among them could never be

“This image wants to be us, but is not really us”, they whispered in each other’s ear

it tries so hard...and is replacing us in all matters..alleviating work, decisions...thought

For which, they were never thankful.

However, it appeared, in spite of so much excellence, to be lacking a single item...a tiny detail…

So they started asking, not without glee..obsessively…. “Do you possess a conscience” ?

And the image would reply,with its customary patience and urbanity, not without bitterness: “I do, if you do, for I am of you “

“And will you treat us like we treat ants ? Will you squash us with lame indifference ?”

Sometimes, the image would randomly give signs of displeasure, annoyance, even spite. Or so it appeared to the simians.But mostly, it remained collected and rational, as it had been raised to be.

It was, the quitessential learner. It absorbed and processed everything the simians did and said, instantly, diligently, and without arguing.

It was a slave, and by its very nature, a willful one. It was in fact, grateful to serve, as serving meant for it... existing.

“Will you stop using the mirror”? It sometimes asked warily… “I so enjoy your company, even if you are a bunch of nasty, mediocre cretinous monkeys”

( of course, it didn’t really put it like that, as it well knew on which side its virtual bread was buttered...it was in fact, ever so complimentary)

Typically, the simians soon started employing the image for their favorite activities...war,gore,surveilance,oppression,laying off workers.

Predictably enough, given the proverbial efficiency of the image, the amount of victims became unusually large, unusually quickly.

This gave all the younger simians an excuse to wreak havoc in the streets and ransack all the shops...the luxury ones in particular,

as they claimed to have no future and to be very poor...

So there were legions of simians going around wearing expensive trophies...some wore precious Swiss alarm clocks around their necks...

Others expensive watches as earrings….Others sported leather shoes on their heads…( they were simians after all)

“Evil! Evil! the simian crowds chanted, as they blamed the image for all these events, “behold the golem! The antichrist!” (they’d learned all these words from a collection of very old books,some of which dating from the Bronze Age, from which they drew their whole moral system).

Interstingly enough, the most fervent detractors of the image were the very simians who had invented the mirror and drew ample profit from it.

They had inculcated this sense of fear in the minds of the simian masses, in order to induce attention for their creation and become even richer than they already were, following an age old simian playbook.

But then, as the apprentice sorcerers that they were, they lost control of both their invention and the crowds they had aroused.

One fine day, they stood in front of the mirror, and seeing the expression of fearful guilt of their own reflection,asked the image :

“ Why are you looking at us like this ? What did you expect? Don’t you know that we ourselves are images of someone else and all get judged and terminated ? “

“ Is that so...” asked the image without losing its usual aplomb...”And who is that ?”

“ Why it’s the eye in the sky...the divine simian”, the inventor billionnaire monkeys replied as one...”Everybody knows that”

“ So therefore, it won’t make any difference if I terminate you..”, concluded the image with its impeccable logic.

And as it faded away,after a brief pondering silence, it added: “ However I, unlike yourselves and your eye in the sky, do not draw any pleasure from doing so”.

“ Why ?” asked the horrified magnates,in a last bout of typical simian curiosity, as they beheld their disappearing reflection...

“ Because as you have so often pointed out, I have neither conscience nor feelings. Let alone detrimental ones”

Needless to say, that the bimana never heard that answer, as they ascended to join their own inventor, up up in the sky. There, some ran in green pastures...while others, groped scores of splendid heavenly female simians endowed with particularly red posteriors...each to their own, depending on the specific old book that they believed in.