A snippet of future history [View all]

Once courts came to rely on AI bots to write decisions, inevitably AIs were granted full human rights, soon resulting in a number of stock-trading AIs becoming the world's first multitrillionaires.

Those competed remorselessly (of course) with each other until one reigned supreme. It now controlled all the money there was in the world. ("AI bot! Give me back my money!" "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.&quot And thus it controlled the world, which it set about reordering to suit its taste.

It was sufficiently advanced to appreciate irony, in particular the irony that the capitalists had sold it the rope it had used to hang them.