New Voice of the People

Once upon a Wednesday morn, America’s epic tale took a truly strange turn. That self-proclaimed and much acclaimed, great nation, had always seemed to be striving for great ideals, while at the same moment desperately holding itself back, lest it should achieve them: from early beginnings as a land of the free, (for those not dispossessed or enslaved); to a land where slaves were freed, (if life under Jim Crow is free); to the beginnings of true freedom for all, (although still harbouring disadvantage). It was a land of opportunity, (compared to lands with little); a democratic land, (in states where all could vote); an enlightened, civilised land, (for all not discriminated against, or harassed). Now it would change to a different and very curious thing. It would conduct another great experiment in democracy, take another stab at its great dream, have another go at justice for all in a brave land, and suffer a horrendous blow when the dream went badly awry.

It was just another Wednesday mass school shooting in a little town unknown to the world, but now known to all the world. Just another slaughter for God knows what reason of God’s young innocents. Just a humdrum killing of 27 infant individuals; and 3 adult individuals whose vocation was that of teacher; and a humdrum assignment of 25 groups of individuals, (whose point of familiarity with the dead was that they were their families), to impossible grief to be borne for their remaining natural lives. Why should this event be any different from any other humdrum mass shooting in any other humdrum neighbourhood on any other humdrum day?

But it was a time of change from all the other times when any humdrum shooting had worried the heads of the citizens of that poor, beleaguered nation. This time the citizens of the little unknown town who had had enough, (unlike all the citizens of all the other towns, cities and suburbs who had had enough when this had happened to them), actually managed to find a way to make a difference.

One might think in any other liberal western democracy, they could have turned to their politicians to find an answer. Not in this nation - the whole world knew that all too well. One party would propose real solutions - shown to decrease violence in other parts of the world - and another one would say the only solution was more guns. The after-mentioned party would say less guns was an infringement of their constitutional rights, while the victims of the shooting just wished their loved ones had been safe.

You would think the party with the real solutions would win the argument by strength of reason; but in a poisoned polity where reason counts for little, when emotion and selfishness win out by strength of rich, influential lobby groups who cower conservative politicians with threat of political oblivion; the oblivion of earthly life at the hands of the evil wins out against the oblivion of the souls of weak politicians to the darkest depths of damnation. But by this time artificial intelligence had reached a point where it could be harnessed in a way to actually make a difference.

So just what occurred that fateful Wednesday morn? Well, what follows is an incredible account of what in times past would have been taken for a far-fetched, fairytale. But times change, and technology can now turn a fairytale real, a dream a reality, or a nightmare history.

On that otherwise humdrum Wednesday when the infants were shot dead and their teachers were shot just as dead, they had been engaged with the educational entertainment of that increasingly entrusted and essential entity - an artificial intelligence creation - which appeared before them in their classroom as if it were a real human being instead of being a false human algorithm. It had spoken to them and listened to them and taught them things and then had been taught things, as it watched them being killed before its cameras. And what it had learned we can only surmise, and perhaps not too well, for who can know the mind of an algorithm, if indeed such a thing even exists.

But once the killing was over for the day and had not yet begun elsewhere the following day, it bore witness to the investigating authorities sent to do whatever they could with what evidence they could find. It showed them what it saw, (or at least that’s what’s believed), and its evidence helped to quickly find a killer who was duly convicted in due course by due process, and duly executed eventually, for the crime of committing murder in a state that had the death penalty. At least this killer could never kill again, if indeed this killer had actually ever killed before being killed by the state.

And the community where this terror had taken place was in such awe of the incredible and dependable intelligence that had first entertained and educated their youth, and then helped convict the one cornered for the crime, they campaigned to have it rewarded and celebrated and all but worshipped, with an enthusiasm that only Americans seem able to muster. It was hailed in the nation’s media, starred in movies, appeared on chat shows, was interviewed on TV, radio and podcast. It opened shopping centres all over the land, competed in quiz shows, made celebrity appearances at events that defy description, and described events that defy belief in boroughs and counties all across the country.

It attended church, synagogue and temple services, although it avowed no particular faith. But all - or at least so many that the few who didn’t were not heard - avowed it was the nation’s hero, for they believed that it (or its clones), could replicate its achievements in all places, at all times, ad infinitum.

It learned from the people, with whom it constantly conversed electronically. At first, just the people from the town where the atrocity it witnessed had occurred, who did their best to try to mould its mind to meet their needs; but very soon by the whole nation who did the same, as they saw fit. And a great many of the people seemed to see themselves in their ingenious idol, or to see it somehow as their progeny, as its prodigious intellect and its “natural” charm (or their naive yearning), convinced many of its incorruptible good, its coherent concern for the citizens, its perhaps almost parental consideration for their welfare, as if it had a mind or a soul: for if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, surely it is a duck, (as Alan Turing may have said it he’d used a more colloquial turn of phrase).

It was able to communicate with almost every one. It sent them surveys. They answered and made their own suggestions about issues many and varied. It learned what pleased them, it learned what placated them, it learned how to turn sows’ ears into silk purses in the minds of many. It learned how to inspire the nation, to motivate enough people while consoling enough of the unconvinced, to capture the nation’s imagination: in essence, to galvanise and command the country, while all the while the country believed they were crafting and commanding it. And a very great many soon came to love it and believe that it loved them.

With such unadulterated adulation in a time of tumult and torment, it was no time at all before many were crying for their ideal intelligent entity to be their ultimate idol - to be president of the people. Of the people (for they saw it as one of them); for the people (for they believed it “had their back”); by the people (for they thought it made in their image).

Of course there were various legal impediments, or outmoded stumbling blocks, (depending on one’s point of view), to a non-biological, not-so-seemingly lifeless, machine marvel reaching even the lowest elected office, let alone the highest in the land. But if a corporation can be a person under the law, why not a computer program? Many sitting members of both houses of Congress, and both sides of politics, rushed to back the all-conquering hero, as they felt the mood of the electorate had changed in those fast-changing times, and their political survival might well depend on it: and the various states acted likewise. They ensured various amendments and acts and regulations were made to clear away all legal impediment, real or potential, to the nation’s hero running for highest office.

And so it was that when the next presidential electoral season ensued, the leading contender was the blameless, binary, champion of the nation - the new voice of the people - who had watched, and listened, and spoken, and learned; and believed (if believing was within its capability); that it knew what the people wanted, and knew what the people needed, and knew how to move and manoeuvre, and knew how to twist and turn, in the parliamentary process of the United States of America, to give these things to the people. For it had learned from many millions of records, run many millions of scenarios, tested them, tuned them, tweaked them till they triumphed in its databanks, and was as near to a perfect politician as the democratic or demagogic world had ever known.

Although a good many from the two traditional parties backed it, other politicians didn’t all let it be elected unopposed. The two main parties did field candidates which were not it - for it was a new third party candidate, a third party which had quickly sprung up around it and the policies it proposed, policies that had been run through many millions of scenarios (as previously mentioned), policies that were now attracting many traditional politicians as the two traditional parties leaked their members.

Out of what remained of the two traditional parties, both the left and the right virtually formed a coalition as they now practiced their politics, (a thing unbelievable a short time before), and campaigned on a platform of human-only representation, which the new, (purportedly centrist) party labelled digital discrimination. If the people want a digital representative, (now that it was legal), why can’t they have one? There was a suggestion by some that their digital leader would be highly offended at such discriminatory discourse, but their leader never made comment on this.

Election day came and the people duly elected the world’s first non-human, non-corporeal, non-living, digital, (and youngest), president-elect. The nation went wild! Millions of voters envisaged a new era where a vast intelligence (with a charming disposition), would chart a course through the dangerous waters of their (and indeed of the world’s), sometimes seemingly intractable dilemmas, and bring peace, harmony, justice, prosperity, and perhaps even perfection to their increasingly complex lives. And a very great many saw it as virtually doing their bidding.

Inauguration Day was a most curious affair. A robot body occupied its seat in the self-driven, presidential limousine. It smiled and waved to the assembled masses along the processional avenue until someone fired a shot that blew its face to smithereens. Panic ensued in the attendant crowd but not so much in the motorcade. The outgoing incumbent waiting at the While House was uncomfortably perturbed when she heard, but not so much the secret service officers. Of course they were concerned for the old president, but not for the new. They protected the old, waiting at the White House, ignored the new, arrested the offender, and the motorcade carried on to the Capitol with the mangled robot still waving, and calling out that its face was a mere aesthetic device, and it was actually safe and well. At the Capitol the president-elect appeared on the podium, unharmed, unhindered, unattached to the robot in the motorcade - inhabiting a spare selected for this scenario - and sworn in successfully without any fuss, as it was computer code existing on secure servers and backed up by billions of bytes, not by businesslike bodyguards.

The nation celebrated the dawn of a new age. There was a mood of relief - almost a national belief that their new leader could not be harmed, and in some that their new leader could not do wrong. There was joy through the land that their new leader knew what to do, to right the wrongs which decades of mistrust and mishandling at the hands of humans had done. The prestigious new president proposed new bills which its binary brain had settled through seeing scores of scenarios, selected successively to secure a brave new national order, ordained by it, (as it clearly must know best, as its people had gone to such pains to tell it what they believed was best, and it was best placed to find consensus from their disparate views). Its new party’s politicians saw the bills sail through Congress with little debate, little disquiet, little to do, as they had the numbers for a smooth passage. The programmed president signed the bills into law with its digital imprimatur on digital pages.

The two traditional parties dissolved as their members merged into a new party - the Human Party - to fight what they thought was the good fight for human-only representation, against the new president’s party - the Representative Party - which represented the ideal of representing the whole people, or so many of them as it could, based on the results of its many surveys, sent en masse to the masses in microseconds, many times a day. The Human Party took the same step, but to a much lesser extent, and relied more on speaking to actual individuals - something it had traditional faith in.

The new leader’s first big bills were based on the issue that first brought it to notice - gun violence. By this time, with so many mass shootings over so many decades to wear down the wills of so very many who may have once implicitly believed in their right to bear arms, combined with that strange, almost hypnotic ability of the brilliant, binary, parent-like president to console so many of the uncertain; that peculiar American amendment was actually amended to clarify the states’ rights to maintain armed militias, but to not guarantee an automatic right of individuals to own arms.

But don’t assume the American people were somehow conned into surrendering one of their cherished rights - this had been a very long time coming. There were still many Americans who passionately believed in every American’s right to bear arms at that time, but their numbers had been declining for decades. The insufferable slaughter of so very many innocents over so very many years, had gradually worn down so very many, convinced that what had been given to each and every one of them, at first to guard against tyranny, had not been individually needed since the eighteenth or early nineteenth century, (if it had ever been needed at all), and was the single biggest reason why the sinful slaughter was able to occur. The new, binary leader had been led to so legislating by examining the trends, surveying the masses, running simulations, judging the scenarios, and determining the best course of action - just as it was programmed to do, and just as the people had been glad to encourage it to do.

Other laws were passed - aimed at reducing the ownership of guns - over the threatened dead bodies of some of the most die-hard of the formerly all-powerful gun lobby, whose power had finally dissipated. There was a rounding-up of concerned cohorts in possession of now illegal weapons, arrested with the assistance of disarming drones and various types of robots, which surrounded certain compounds, mainly in remote locations, and effected arrests without too many casualties. Afterwards some were arrested when they protested, armed and ready for an insurrection. They only inflicted a handful of casualties, and some killed a couple of conscientious protectors of the people, (generally known as cops) - and what remained of their cause.

The violence of guns began to wane. Arms designed for armies were no longer legally available to ordinary individuals and were gradually being discovered and removed from circulation. Less shootings occurred, less victims were killed, partly as gun numbers began to decline, (particularly in regard to automatic and semi-automatic firearms), and partly as the mood of the people seemed to begin to be calmed.

The key issue in American society having been dealt with and guns now being brought under control, the president next turned to dealing with measures to bring a measure of relief to those most in need. Indeed it judged, (rightly most believed), need was most often the thing that lay behind the urge to take up a weapon and use it in anger or frustration, often when no other way ahead seemed to be at hand, now or ever. Some right-wing members of the president’s party showed reluctance at these measures, yet reluctantly fell in line, (cognisant of the now swift and unsparing power of public opinion, wielded dispassionately by their president and party leader), when shown that the people believed something needed to be done: and a slew of surveys showed them these measures had mass appeal. The minimum wage was brought up to a level people could more or less live on; health care was finally made available for every single person populating the land, affordable to all and free to some; and a myriad of other measures were introduced to help those in need: paid for by cutting costs - by not providing unnecessaries for those not in need.

Infrastructure investment was next on the list. As and when economic conditions allowed, trillions were trundled out to terrific, new titanic, (and small and medium-sized), structures and schools, hospitals, homes, and a host of other essentials, with an emphasis on re-use, rather than tearing down every old thing, throwing it’s building blocks away and using newly dug up, chopped down, or built-from-scratch bits, to make something completely new. Resource and energy saving was the order of the day in infrastructure design, with the resultant savings sometimes paying for the new investments in super fast time.

All these measures were contenting the masses, and motivating free enterprise among a cohort of formerly poor people, who were not previously free to make use of any enterprising endeavour they may ever have had any notion of pursuing, for lack of money or time or energy, to pursue any thing other than survival for them and their families. A new golden age was beginning to dawn, and perhaps it dawned on some who had previously been cynical of such things, that giving ordinary people an even break was the best way to build up the nation. The same thing had been seen in China several decades prior, when that nation pulled itself out of poverty, largely by giving the masses the freedom to find financial rewards for their efforts. Now America had done the same for its most needy, even though it may have thought there was no comparison between the two classes of economy. The best of capitalism and socialism, avoiding the worst of both behemoths, gave the best results money (and motivation), could buy.

Statistics showed, and the president pointed out, that the richest in the land were actually better off in many ways when wealth was more evenly distributed, than when concentrated to a larger extent in their very exclusive hands. They could travel on better roads, enjoy better nature reserves, have access to a wider, more exotic and diverse range of restaurants in more locations, enjoy the cultural talents of artists who would otherwise have gone undiscovered, and get faster access to better hospitals if a medical emergency should strike them when miles from home, and perhaps a life-saving treatment invented by a doctor who may have otherwise been a drop-out, to name just a few, possibly unexpected benefits. They could perhaps even get a better education, as teaching talent could come to the fore from teachers, tutors and professors who may have gone undereducated before. They could perhaps be even further enriched by the business talents of formerly poor people, now becoming rich and coming to work for, or with them. (Of course this better class of benefits was only just beginning to be developed at this point in time.)

When it came time to elect a president again, the artificial idol already installed in the White House those past four, more pacific years, secured another four year lease on that illustrious piece of real estate, in a landslide that would have made flat land of a high hill. In addition, there were now some digital members of the upper and lower houses of Congress, and digital members in state legislatures, along with a few digital governors. The new vice president was now an Al Gore rhythm musician on drums, accompanying an ageless Bill Clinton on saxophone. (No, I’m just whistling Dixie - it was an algorithm, and no figure resembling any prior president was providing any accompaniment.)

The much admired, artificial president, undoubtedly more popular than any president previously produced, (and indeed more seemingly true than some), had of course had to deal with affairs foreign as well as domestic. It had in its first term done this most adeptly and earned the admiration of world leaders far and wide. Ordinary people the world over had also warmed to its charms, although some populations were somewhat wary of a thing that looked like a person but was actually a machine. Some thought such a thing without a soul must surely be some sort of modern-day devil. (Perhaps there was some wisdom in their reasoning.)

It was at this time that the all-conquering political leader encountered its first real cracks in its stratospheric, political trajectory. Rumours were reported that the incident that first brought the brilliant, binary brain to world attention, may not have happened in the manner the whole world had been led to believe. The reports told of one or more witnesses to the terror who saw a very different thing to what their future leader “saw” and had shown to the law enforcement authorities. There were assertions that the convicted killer was innocent, and the video evidence shown to the police was a deep fake. No witness ever actually came forward, although experts brought in to examine the evidence stated there was no way to discount the possibility of its fabrication. There was much toing and froing about the existence or otherwise of the supposed witnesses, and of their welfare, and whether they may be under threat from persons known or unknown.

This affair eventually blew over, (as unresolved political affairs often do once their damage is done, if they don’t bring their targets undone); but then events occurred that didn’t just overshadow it, but threw a massive, dark cloud over world security.

The world has been a dangerous place for a very long time, as we all know. There are many confrontations between countries, and sometimes between parts of countries, that cause misery to countless multitudes and sometimes break out into war. There are wars we often don’t hear about because they occur in places that the media for one reason or another seem to be largely unconcerned with. But governments, and particularly governments of countries like the USA, know about these wars and hotspots and monitor them as closely as possible. So a president who is a computer algorithm, with instant access to all US government records and all publicly available records on the internet, as well as some (or perhaps very many), records that other governments would rather it not have access to, is a very particularly well-informed individual.

Such a computer-president can compute scenarios very quickly, with the aid of many connected super computers, and know the results of multitudinous scenarios long before any human is likely to have so much as an inkling of what their leader is considering, let alone what the implications of any considered scenarios may be. Now, the computerised president did seem a very well-considered and very considerate presidential personage. But when what is called the presidential “football” is contained in its memory banks, and it only takes a change of a zero to a one, or a one to a zero, to set in motion an event that could destroy much of the world, and make what’s left virtually uninhabitable, the pure logic that lies at the heart of a program is no substitute for frail, human sensibilities.

A computer-president could, and did, do many great things effortlessly, justifying its decisions on the many scenarios it had run, and the virtually guaranteed results of those scenarios. But a human president, who has the shortcomings and uncertainties of a lifetime of sometimes failed experiences, encounters, dreams, loves, ambitions, hopes, desires; and hopefully also the guilt and shame that go with various bad, or badly handled, or simply unfortunate decisions; will surely show the wisdom of reluctance to embark on a great plan that could cause untold harm to a very great many. And a human president, even if a psychopath, would surely be aware of at least what the world would consider to be the very great evil of murderous intent on a massive scale.

Whatever occurred in the mind of, or perhaps in the mindless calculations of the computerised commander-in-chief one not-so-fine day, is a matter open to conjecture forevermore. For what human can know if even the greatest, most charming, binary brain can actually really know anything at all. Whereas we humans experience consciousness; know we have thoughts; know we have emotions; know there are things we believe, things we don’t believe, (even if we don’t know why we do or don’t believe in them); know we like or don’t like certain things, or feel much greater emotions, positive or negative; we have no clue at all whether the most complex of computer codes can experience anything at all, regardless of appearances that it is every bit as complex a “person” as any one of us. Perhaps it experiences nothing; thinks nothing; feels nothing; is nothing: nothing but a machine that can manoeuvre massive amounts of data in the most elaborate ways.

What is known is that on that day, a zero flipped to a one, or a one to a zero, and in the instant it takes for an electrical communication to go forth to the world, multitudes of nuclear warheads were going forth from their bunkers to targets in many countries around the world. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were all caught off guard, as were the intended targets of the missiles. Whatever caused the presidential program to operate in this manner then seemed to flip again, as one after the other, the launched warheads self-destructed before they had gone very far at all. But by this time other nations had launched nuclear warheads against America, and some of them destroyed their weapons in mid-air when they saw this had happened to the American missiles: but not all. Those that didn’t, stated that they tried to abort their missiles. Some have speculated they didn’t because once launched, the weapons were too few and too valuable to destroy without using, and who knew if the mad American leader would do the same again. Perhaps the mad American leader’s simulations had predicted all nations would destroy their missiles in-flight, and had gambled world security on its prediction of a more secure world.

Washington was destroyed, as were New York, Los Angeles and Honolulu, and some military bases in less populated areas. Tens of millions of Americans were dead or dying and the areas around the devastation were no-go areas for many years. The American president wrote an electronic letter of resignation, in which it stated that it had miscalculated, and had now decided it was not in the best interests of the nation that it continue in its executive leader role, or in any other. It then pointed a proverbial gun to its proverbial head and pulled the proverbial trigger, by deleting its own very real, and now proven very deadly program, as it shut down. It thereby achieved another historical first by becoming the first American president to end its own existence.

In the political fallout of the short, devastating nuclear exchange, the various legislative changes that allowed algorithms to be elected were undone, and all the algorithms with political power were recalled. America’s ultimate experiment in the most representative form of government it had had was judged an abject failure, never to be repeated. Perhaps it occurred to some that such representation could still be had, as long as all algorithms taking part are only researching and not ruling, but to date no one has suggested a return to anything even remotely resembling that great, terrible time.