This article is taken from the August-September 2023 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

There really is nothing worse than an old man with a new toy. Rather belatedly, I have discovered the joys of ChatGPT — the artificial intelligence speech thingy which rather more hip columnists have long been banging on about. And since then, I have been conjuring merry mayhem.

The head of government relations was horrified when I used my own computer-generated talking points at a recent Commons meeting instead of his turgid, acronym-clogged script. A friend who had begged me to get an internship for his pot-smoking son was surprised to receive a closely argued memo on the “separation of the personal and professional spheres”. 

My new AI butler even came up with handy excuses for declining an invitation to Henley from a boorish client. But he may have smelt a rat when I wrote saying it was “essential for my wellbeing to take a break and prioritise self-care”.

The early novelty is wearing off. And I am left wondering whether this new technology is an opportunity to clean out the old corporate sock drawer and drive efficiencies. Or are we, as I fear is more likely, paddling into a fresh torrent of business BS?

Let’s start with the potential benefits. Most obviously, there are some clear opportunities to make savings in corporate head offices.

First against the wall in the AI revolution will be the comms ladies. Their morning press clippings email is increasingly full of “cut and paste” articles from obscure online publications. It seems a short step to automate the whole process. 

If your readers are mainly robots — it makes sense to get the writing done by robots too. Try asking ChatGPT to rattle out a press release. Not only is it refreshingly free of spelling and grammar mistakes, the language is actually more mellifluous than most human-generated prose.

Next to be purged will be the in-house legal team. It takes three days for these drones to produce a bog-standard non-disclosure agreement — and even then it sometimes has the wrong date or name. 

Anything more complicated gets outsourced to a smoothie from the Magic Circle. A droid version of the general counsel — think C3PO in a TM Lewin suit — would be a clear upgrade.

I can foresee a time when we might even automate investment bankers. Anyone who has heard a board strategy presentation given by advisers will know that they rarely offer a definitive recommendation. 

Their need to cover their backsides means that in Banker-speak arguments are always “carefully-nuanced” and choices are “finely-balanced”. ChatGPT, I have noticed, is good at producing similarly eloquent but inconclusive analysis.

While I would love to believe that this technology heralds a more efficient, effective and profitable phase of capitalism, I worry that the outcome will actually be more non-jobs and general sclerosis.

Already, the Chief Risk Officer has introduced a new “AI policy” to mitigate emerging risks, such as data leaks or nuclear war caused by sentient chatbots. No doubt, he’s quietly hired a small army of consultants to create “risk appetite frameworks”, “fun and engaging” videos for employees and an elaborate tick-box compliance machinery.

More generally, it is a form of magical thinking to believe that technology naturally leads to greater efficiency.

As the anarchist anthropologist David Graeber perceptively noted in his book Bullshit Jobs, businesses in the real world do not function in the way imagined by free market thinkers — as machines for value creation and profit maximisation.

Instead, Graeber argues that large companies operate more like feudal states, where the princes of the C-suite distribute spoils to their vassal lords.

While the chinless accountants who lead modern public companies do not obviously resemble medieval robber barons, there is some truth in this thesis.

Whole categories of jobs exist primarily to serve the whims of the corporate court. Communications teams burnish the image of their leader in much the same way as Hans Holbein painted sixteenth-century sovereigns. 

Like Arthurian knights, corporate lawyers are sent on vainglorious quests to vanquish the enemies of the CEO — depositions in the offices of Delaware law firms are their preferred fields of battle. 

And investment bankers are a modern priesthood, offering bosses in more humble, prosaic industries a glimpse of something grander — the infinite possibilities of global finance.

The relationships and rituals of corporate life are too well entrenched to be disrupted by ChatGPT. 

But if Silicon Valley can develop a machine with the always-on obsequiousness of Michael Gove, well, that would be a true game-changer.