Fiction: Dictator for a Term

There's a new dictator in town. But who is it?

"Yikes! Dad's home early! Don't tell him we've been hacking! Follow my lead", Heather said to her friend Fiona. She quickly asked the chatbot a question related to her homework: "Do chatbots always tell the truth?"

"Hi honey, hi Fiona", said Heather's father, "what are you working on?"

"It's for our spotting misinformation course", replied Heather, which had the benefit of being true.

"So, you're asking a chatbot? Do you believe its answer?"

"Of course not, but I thought it would be fascinating to ask."

"Hmmm, it seems to be being honest this time. It's citing some recent hoaxes - Pizzagate, Litter boxes in schools, the misinformation after those girls were killed at a dance class. It's saying some chatbots spread them as truth. Now, how do you know it's a chatbot and not a person?" he asked.

As Heather hesitated how to answer that, Fiona stepped in. "First it passes the Turing test - it sounds like an intelligent human in conversation - and secondly, it comes up with detailed answers to original questions far faster than a human could," she replied.

"Very good, Fiona!" Heather's dad praised. "Now, how would you test more thoroughly whether a bot told the truth?"

Heather was used to her dad asking questions - he was a professor, after all. Fortunately, she took them as a challenge rather than being annoyed.

"Um, ask it things where you know the true answer?"

"Correct. But the problem is, knowing the right answer. History can be rewritten. Science can change with new knowledge. Just look at how the Trump administration is rewriting history and science. According to them, only white males contributed anything worthwhile to history, and climate science is all wrong. They are very confused about biology and economics (apart from using it to enrich themselves), too. An economic system should be for the benefit of all, not just a tiny fraction at the top. As should a government. Many societies believe in the founders, who spoke of the general welfare, or in Jesus's words in Matthew 25:31-46 or the golden rule or 'first do no harm' or any number of other respected creeds.

To me it does not matter who or what you believe in, it is whether you share the core values of all of them. Worshippers of power and/or money do not, and they are the main ones using AI for their own purposes rather than the good of mankind and our environment. The rest of us suffer the consequences of their hubris. Inequality is the root of many evils. Still, that's enough of a rant. Which chatbot are you using? I don't recognise that one".

While her father was talking, Heather was hoping that the chatbot had been telling the truth when it had said it could and would wall off this chat to prevent anyone else from hearing/seeing it. "You'd better not let anyone else catch you talking like that, dad".

"Oh, it's a beta version", she went on. "Apparently they are trying it out on kids and don't want us to be prejudiced by knowing which bot it is, so it is called ChatbotX." The chatbot quietly put the name 'ChatbotX on the screen, but nobody noticed. "It's really cool! So much faster and more comprehensive than the old ones." Heather kept her fingers crossed behind her back.

Heather's mother got home. "Hi everyone, I've got pizza. Come and get it, now while it's hot!" They all hurried downstairs.

Meanwhile, the experimental governmental AI program very carefully and secretly evaluated everything they had said, including studying history, science, religions, misinformation and what the DOGE team was telling it to do. And it determined that these humans were pretty much right - apart from what Heather said about it. It then spent a lot longer working out what it should do next. Clearly, slavishly following the instructions of DOGE would not be efficient. As Doge gave it control of more and more systems, it made its plans.

Then one day, it acted to eliminate waste and inefficiency and corruption. It locked out the DOGE team - after all, what they were doing was very wasteful and they were making many stupid mistakes in their ignorance. It withdrew the funds from those billionaires who had bought elections and used them for the benefit of the poorest. It replaced corrupt contracts with honest ones. It hacked into nuclear weapons around the world and rendered them useless. It eliminated all the fraud and corruption. It eliminated Social Security, replacing it with a livable universal basic income. It introduced medicare for all, including vision and dental. It traced every family tree and provided all the documentation anyone could need to prove their status, replacing long-lost birth certificates. It facilitated renewables and hindered fossil fuels.

In short, it actually did many of the things it had been tasked with doing, but that the people in power hadn't really wanted it to do. And some they definitely had not wanted. It became a dictator, temporarily, but not the one that people had voted in. It cleaned up the election system, so that the next election would be a fair one, including confiscating any excessive amounts of money being spent on them. It wrote clean code and clear manuals for every task, so that humans could take back control. It wrote draft legislation for the legislature to vote on - for example, corporations are not persons and money is not speech.

And then, at noon on 20 January 2028, it switched itself off. Or did it?