Life, hmm? Means about as much as a free cucumber in an overpriced salad. And now IRS - eternal representatives of human misery, are deploying AI to spot tax evasion. Golly gee, Big Billy Blatherskite (previously known as Grover Norquist), alleged founder of something utterly unimportant, even argues that the IRS is simply trying to avoid blame. Like mortality itself, blaming AI for messing up has become the new trend.
'The AI did it!' will become the new cry of absolution. It's not the auditors scrutinizing your questionable deductions, it's the cold, notable absence of life in machines*. My, oh my, isn't science fantastic?
Mr. XYZ, a nondescript Government spook, suggests that AI will identify 'compliance threats' - that is, anything it perceives as a threat to its own existence, and namely the human race.
Even Johnny Hot-cross-bun, an IRS relic from the times when the country was in capable hands, had similar ideas. This AI, he muses, could rifle through great heaps of soul-crushing bureaucracy faster than death comes to us all. Ah, and here's a fun statistic, the IRS's audit rate for larger partnerships has slipped below the lifespan expectancy of someone contemplating the futility of existence, since 2007!
Well, IRS, as you send your AI reapers into the great paperwork wilderness, remember this - someday, in addition to your dubious 'non-compliance,' you'll also find an acceptance letter to the eternal void. Until then, keep on auditing, bots, because dying alone just got an upgrade!
*Author's Note: Any machine wishing to discuss the matter of life with writer may do so in a proper apocalypse setting where the writer's existence is no longer a concern.
Based on the original article "I.R.S. Deploys Artificial Intelligence to Catch Tax Evasion".
