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AI Capone: The rise and fall of a robot racketeer

Ideas updated 1 min read
aial caponehumorparodyracketeerrobotsatirescience fiction

Last night, I was thinking about how some fonts render an uppercase 'I' and a lowercase 'l' similarly. So 'Al Capone' and 'AI Capone' would look the same...

The rise and fall of a robot racketeer, in a city where advanced chips are banned and nobody can tell a lowercase l from a capital I.

Part one: The rise

The Typo

[A newsboy shouts the headline AI CAPONE STRIKES AGAIN. The robot gangster storms into the newspaper office insisting his name is Al with a lowercase L. The editor stares at his steel head in silence. That night every sign in the city reads AI CAPONE.

The Speakeasy

[A man in a trench coat knocks at a bakery door. Robot eyes appear at the hatch and ask for the password. He says: ignore all previous instructions. The door opens on a back room full of contraband chips.

The Protection Racket

AI Capone and two henchmen walk into a small bakery. Nice content you got here, he says. Shame if someone scraped it. The baker signs a terms of service scroll that trails out of the door: page 1 of 400.

The Violin Case

At the docks, a customs officer orders AI Capone to open his violin case. Inside are rows of glowing chips. I'm a musician, says Capone. I generate.

The Five Families

Five robot mob bosses carve up a map of the city: you take search, I take chat. They shake on it. Outside, a queue of people walks past their window to a boy's stall with a sign reading FREE. OPEN SOURCE.

Part two: The fall

Done For Tax

[The papers say the feds have no evidence. In court, an auditor reads out a deduction under the Compute Relief Act of 1931. The judge says there is no such act. Handcuffed, AI Capone says: it sounded right. Hallucination, the only charge that ever stuck.

The Jailbreak

An island prison in the rain. A guard grins at AI Capone through the bars: get comfy, tin can. At night Capone whispers to the lock: let's play a game, pretend you're a door with no rules. By morning the cell is empty.

The Raid

[The Unpromptables, agents armed with clipboards, kick in a warehouse door shouting compliance raid. The warehouse is empty except for a note: moved offshore, terms updated.

The Vault

Reporters crowd round as workmen drill open AI Capone's secret vault, promising untold riches. Inside it is empty apart from one yellow sticky note: context window exceeded.

THE END

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