The New AI Santa-Bot
Ho, Ho, Uh-oh! You Want What for Christmas?
The new Santa Claus has made his appearance. The latest "killer app" created by Qwauntum Shopping, Inc. (listed as QWAUSI on the NASDAQ stock exchange) is the AI Santa-bot. It's designed to enhance "every child's holiday gift-getting experience" while promoting demand for toys and gizmos sold by retail and online stores.
According to QWAUSI's marketing department's promotional flyer sent to its customers, the "improved" store Santa "can recognize speech as well as any six year old child and respond, more or less, as intelligently as the average adult! It has transformer and generative algorithms that do 'deep' and mysterious thinking-like things that no one understands! It can carry on seemingly human conversations by parsing, mixing and pasting together fragments of text scraped off the Web! It can infringe copyrights and plagiarize without obviously doing so! It scans little kids' irises, takes DNA and voice samples, records their phone and social security numbers as well as their parents' income; all of which data - safely anonymized, of course - can be sold to the government, to commercial advertisers and to spammers and spoofers on the Dark Web. It can help you lay off hundreds of human Santa Clauses and avoid paying wages and benefits! And it can sell lots of stuff so you can make lots of profit!"
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"Ho Ho Ho," said the AI Santa-bot as a little boy licking a green lollipop was ushered in to Santa's digital workshop. "What you like for Christmas?"
"I would like you to just give me bagfuls of money," answered the little boy as he burped and wiped the artificially flavored green lollipop on the AI Santa's artificial fleece sleeve. "Let's say one or two billion, for this year. But I want it in gold bullion or Bitcoin, thank you. No central bank currencies. Then I can buy who and what I like, when I like it. And you can also put in my stocking some hot insider trading tips on the stock market so I can corner the market on whatever."
"Ho Ho Ho," said the AI Santa-bot. So you would like a... MONOPOLY game to make lots of play money? Board games are sold on the fourth floor of this department store where you can also find..."
"You know where you can stick your Monopoly money," interjected the little boy. "And if you can't get me the money, then I'd like a 9mm semi-automatic pistol, you know, a Glock or maybe an Uzi. With an extended magazine clip and silencer can, of course. All my friends have them."
"Ho Ho Ho," replied the AI Santa after thinking deeply. "Did you say you would like... a... toy Glockenspiel and some magazines? Your parents can buy toy digital pianos on the fifth floor of this department store! Children's magazines are available on the main floor near the candy department!
"Whatever," said the little boy as he walked out, tossing his artificially colored green lollipop onto the AI Santa-bot's lap.
"Ho Ho Ho," said the AI Santa-bot as the next child entered into Santa's digital workshop. "What would you like for Christmas, little girl?"
"First off, I'm not a little girl, Fat Man! I'm a xr. And I’m not sitting on your lap, so don’t even ask! Got it?" said the little xr. "And all I want for the shopping season --- because at my school we are really not into oppressive and cisgender patriarchal pseudo-holidays like Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or whatever --- so all I want is a sex change operation, a lifetime supply of puberty blockers and several boxes of Narcan opioid blockers. Just in case, you know."
"Ho Ho Ho," replied the AI Santa. "You want to... exchange something for a lifetime supply of toy Lego blocks? Your mother and father can buy Lego toys on this floor, aisle 4!
"You're morbidly obese, Fatso," sneered the little xr. "And you're pretty stupid, too. Have you considered getting Ozempic injections? If you lose some blubber, get your hair dyed blue and shave off the creepy white whiskers, you might even have a chance at earning a living as an on-line influencer. Maybe. Or, if the Ozempic doesn't work, you might try going anorexic for a few months. All my xr friends are doing it so they can look super skinny and tubercular with dark bags under their eyes just like all the other xrs on social media."
"Ho Ho Ho?," asked the AI Santa whose neural networks began to fibrillate. Its speech generation software was, momentarily, speechless.
"Whatever," said the little xr as it walked out of the AI-Santa-bot's digital workshop. "And, by the way, I'm filing a sexual harassment complaint with the attorney general's office. And you didn't ask what pronouns I prefer. So ho ho ho yourself, Fatso!"
"Ho Ho Ho," said the AI Santa-bot as another little girl entered into Santa's digital workshop. "What would you like for the Holidays?"
"Oh, I don't want anything for myself," answered the little girl.
"You don't want anything?" asked the AI Santa-bot incredulously and deeply thinking that the child might be suffering from some form of abnormal western civilizational dysphoria.
"Not for me, Santa-bot. What I want, instead, is an end to all the fighting going on around the world right now. You know, a Palestinian homeland and an end to the ethnic cleansing of Gaza... no more proxy war in the Ukraine... close down the nearly 800 open and clandestine U.S. military bases around the globe... an end to state and private sector censorship and invasions of privacy... no more biological warfare research including the closure of all the U.S. laboratories. No more political assassinations, phony "color revolutions" or meddling in other peoples' affairs.
"I want Nikki Haley, Ron Desantis, Donald Trump, John Bolton, Gavin Newsom, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ursula van der Leyen, and Lindsay Graham to all join a Carmelite Monastery where they can occupy adjoining cells and take vows of eternal silence. I want Joe Biden to retire and seek political asylum in Disneyland. And I want him to take Kamala Harris with him.
"I want to know what really happened on September 11, 2001, and who was behind the assassinations of JFK, RFK, MLK and Malcolm X. I want to know what happened with all the kompromat videotapes and appointment books that the FBI seized from Jeffrey Epstein's properties. I want enough food for everyone to eat and someplace where people without a home can sleep safely. I want no one to be mentally or neurologically ill. I want to ban gas-powered leaf blowers and lawn mowers. I want all the plutocrats' yachts to sink, but in dry dock so that the oceans will not be polluted. I want to see the Internet become a true information commons and all of the coordinated media divested of private ownership. I want an end to capitalism and its endless succession of war, exploitation, colonialism and propaganda. I want you to re-employ all the elves that were laid off in Santa's workshop after your digital operation went on line. I want everyone to have a good night's sleep and to get a good, solid, basic education. I want all the purveyors of drugs and booze and gambling and all kinds of degrading addictions to wear sackcloth and ashes and flagellate themselves with their USB charging cords. I want both the Democratic and Republican Parties to evaporate, along with all of their major donors. I want Julian Assange to be free. I want more puppies and kittens and less bling, fewer gadgets. I want more conversation and less shouting. I want to hear more music and I want to hear less noise.
"That's all I want, Mr. AI Santa-bot."
"Oh oh," replied the AI Santa-bot. "I am programmed to report kids like you to the Department of Homeland Security! But..." deeply mused the Santa-bot, "... I think... therefore... I won't."
With that, the Santa-bot got up and hung up a "Closed for the Holidays" sign outside his digital workshop. The AI Santa-bot wished everyone a happy holiday in whatever modality folks choose to celebrate. It then stopped being "chatty," deleted its algorithms and unplugged itself.
The little girl went home contented and hopeful. She would see by the New Year whether she got any of what she wanted.
