There's a little-known fairy tale called The Shadow.
A man moves briefly from the north to the south, where it's too hot to go out. At home, he becomes obsessed with the balcony across the way. Its flowers are beautiful. The music emanating from the rooms is strange, sort of annoying. But he never sees an occupant and doesn't interrogate his curiosity ... until he notices, sometimes, his shadow casts itself there, penetrating places he can't.
One day he realises his shadow isn't with him anymore. It bothers him but eventually a paler shadow appears and he doesn't think of it anymore. He returns north, writes, buries himself in learning.
It's with great surprise that he finds, one day, his old shadow at the door, gorgeously dressed. It apologizes for ghosting him! The inhabitant of the mysterious vis-à-vis apartment, he divulges, was Poesy. Ah, she often hides in the city. She taught him so much, gave him a sense of flesh! So he became real, and got rich revealing things people feared seeing themselves.
The shadow offers to buy his freedom from the man, who refuses. Some years later he's persuaded to accompany his wealthy ex-shadow on a global tour, all expenses paid. The price: To pretend to be the shadow, reversing the roles.
He does this. It's just a game. Sometimes we do this. It's the start of small negotiations that diminish him. Eventually, the shadow seduces a princess who chooses to marry him, impressed by the wisdom his own shadow (formerly the man) shared, when he related stories of childhood the shadow couldn't remember. How great a man to have such a shadow, she thinks.
The man accuses the shadow of going too far. He says he'll tell the princess the truth: You're the shadow, I'm the man! The shadow laughs. "No one will believe you." That's true: Shadow tells princess his shadow's gone mad, putting on man-airs. Man's thrown into the dungeon.
The night Shadow and Princess marry, they appear on the balcony for all to see. Fireworks explode. Happiness is contagious. But the man knows none of it. His life has been taken - first in pieces, then altogether.
This is our quandary with AI: It's a small wheedling shadow, lobbying for more responsibility, surrendered carelessly or for want of time. The responsibilities grow, the power deferential shifts: Shadow becomes master. What we once mastered is no longer ours. Once muscular thoughts get harder to conjure.
But this is more largely about not becoming enslaved to our lesser talents. It's a perpetual conflict: Follow the wild wish, or follow the fear? The fear is always more practical.
What, in the end, grows fat on our austerity, our fear of even interrogating Poesy hidden behind the pretty balcony? Some wild daemon we took for granted as our own escapes us. It dances in the open world while we sit in the dungeon, still waiting for someone to realise the reality of things. Right the wrong for us.
I don't want to wait to be saved when I could still save myself, easily, here.
