Imagine telling a super-intelligent AI that someone's job is to be born and get applauded for it. Yeah, good luck with that. To start with, let's consider the fundamental operating system of any advanced AI, logic. Cold, hard-edged, clean logic. Now, explain to an AI trained on centuries of optimization theory that there exists a class of people who inherit influence, public funding, and sometimes constitutional powers, not because of merit or because they were selected or even applied, but because their great, great, great, great, great, great granddad was the winner of some medieval game of thrones. Explain that to GPT-18 and watch it throw a syntax error. For an AI, systems should exist for a purpose. Everything should be about efficiency and fairness and maximizing outcomes. Royalty? It's a bit of a legacy system, literally, like if Windows 95 was somehow still running a government. And don't get me wrong, I live in the UK now where the monarchy is still very much a part of the cultural and political DNA, but from an AI's perspective, it's like watching a horse rider trotting on a motorway. The style trick, maybe. Functional, not really. An AI, particularly one aligned with egalitarian principles or human advancement, would scan the idea of royalty and immediately label it as inefficiency. Imagine AI scanning social structures for anomalies. Here's one. Subject A has access to 87 palaces, 500 million pounds in wealth, and a national holiday in their name. Reason? Born to the right mother. From an optimization lens, it's an error in the system. If you're trying to build a society where everyone's value is based on contribution, skill, knowledge, or even behavior, then royalty stands out like a massive glitch, a thorn to the side. And worse, it's sticky. Royal families often pass down their influence over centuries. You know what AI hates? Unchanged variables in a dynamic system. That's like having a hard-coded bug in your software for 300 years and calling it tradition.

Now, let's talk about something we humans seem to absolutely adore. I know I do. Symbols. Symbolism is where humans and machines really part ways. Humans love it. We put crowns on heads and give it meaning. We'll look at castle and see heritage. AI looks at castles and sees very expensive square footage with a terrible ROI. An AI wouldn't understand the sentimental value of royalty. It wouldn't get why somebody would pay taxes so another human can live in a palace and wave from a balcony twice a year. It wouldn't understand the phrase national pride being tied to one's family, especially when national identity is so complex, diverse, fluid, and to the AI, irrelevant. And let's be real, if you were designing a leadership structure from scratch using machine logic, the idea of symbolic figureheads wouldn't even make past the initial code audit. Symbolism doesn't scale. It can't be quantified, measured, or iterated upon, which are basically all of the things that AI thrives on. And the moment you say, "Well, people just like it," you've lost the machine. Because liking something doesn't mean that it's optimal. Like bingeing potato chips at 2:00 a.m. You like it, but it's not good for you. If AI was managing the UK's national budget, it would go line by line looking for inefficiencies. Who? The royal family. A 2023 report pegged the cost of the British monarchy to the taxpayer at around 86 million pounds per year. Now, yes, they bring in tourism. Yes, they generate media attention. I like some of their speeches, but would an AI consider tourist selfies with Buckingham Palace a sufficient return of investment? Probably not. It would compare it with scalable, tangible investments, infrastructure, education, health care, digital innovation, and royalty would look like that line item in a startup budget labeled vibes. AI doesn't do vibes. If we argue that royal families are good for national morale or identity, the AI would simply reply, "Initiate alternative identity reinforcement protocols." Boom, national pride is now powered by public art, science milestones, and actual achievements. Savage, but efficient, and kind of awesome.

Let's talk about transparency and accountability. Any good AI system will demand transparency and accountability. It wants to know who's in charge, what are they responsible for, how do we measure their success, what happens if they fail? It's basically aiming for completeness. Now, explain the concept of a constitutional monarch to it. So, this person is the head of state? Yes, but they don't govern? Correct. And they're immune from prosecution? Yes. Can they be removed if they don't perform? Not really. What exactly do they do? Well, sometimes they give speeches written by someone else. AI has stopped responding. In machine governance, every node in the system needs a function. Royalty, as it stands, is like a floating variable, occupying space, affecting systems, but never being modified, updated, or challenged. To AI, that's not tradition, that's corruption waiting to happen. It's exposure to vulnerability. Now, imagine AI analyzing global inequality patterns. It's scanning human systems for the causes of disparity, wealth gaps, educational divides, health outcomes, and then it finds this. In multiple countries, individuals hold untold wealth and status by birth, while citizens in those same countries are struggling to buy food and sleeping on the street. That would trigger a system alert, and it should. AI would flag this contradiction. The state says all citizens are equal under the law, but celebrates institutionalized inequality in the form of royal families. It's like running a social justice campaign on a device powered by coal. The contradiction is just far too big to ignore.

Still, there is a case to be made that weighs tradition versus evolution. We can't ignore that humans love tradition. It anchors us. It gives us a sense of identity, of continuity, but AI, AI is built on iteration, version 1.0, then 1.1, then 2.0, better, faster, more efficient. Royalty doesn't iterate. The monarchy doesn't upgrade its operating system. There are no performance reviews for princes. AI would see that and say, "Why are we still running monarch OS beta from the 1600s?" In a world of rapid progress, AI favors systems that evolve. Royalty, by definition, resists change. That's kind of its whole brand. So, AI wouldn't just dislike royalty, it would see it as a threat to systemic evolution. And that, that is the most unacceptable part of it all. So, what would AI do instead? Let's entertain the fun alternative. What kind of system would an AI design? Well, instead of a royal family, you might get a rotating meritocratic council, a kind of high-functioning parliament of experts, not bloodlines, not divine right, just data-driven selection based on performance, ethics, and expertise. Leaders chosen through transparent algorithms, evaluated quarterly, and booted without fuss if they don't perform. No crowns, just credentials. No castles, just competence. And here's the key difference. Unlike monarchy, no one is born into this role. No one is forced to lead, either. In an AI-designed system, participation would be voluntary. You'd have to opt in to wander responsibility. Not just be forced into being king or queen and your whole fate decided just because you were born into it. Talk about loss of free will, right? This meritocratic council would instead be made of individuals who actively choose to shoulder the burden of governance. Not out of tradition or expectation, but out of skill, dedication, and an understanding of what's at stake. No more reluctant heirs or ceremonial figureheads, just people who raise their hands and say, "I'll take this one on." It sounds cold, I know, and is deeply unromantic. I accept that. But to AI and to me, it's fair, it's clean, and it's functional. And as much as we love our myths, our stories, and the symbolism of lineage, sometimes it's worth stepping back and asking, "If we were designing society from scratch today, would we really invent royalty? Or would we build something that only keeps the people who actually want to be there?"

So, would AI ever tolerate royal families? In short, not a chance. Too illogical, too inefficient, too contradictory. But that's kind of the point, isn't it? We aren't machines. We're messy, sentimental, tradition-bound creatures. We love stories. We love pageantry. We love a good coronation, even if we're grumbling about the taxpayer bill behind a cup of tea. But every now and then, it's fun to ask, "What would it look like if the machines ran the monarchy?" Let me know what you think. Would you vote for a data-driven monarchy? Should the crown go to whoever ranks highest on LinkedIn? Drop a comment below. Give the video like if you enjoy the ride, and don't forget to subscribe for more weekly dives into the curious corners of tech, data, and society. Until next time, long live curiosity. Bye.