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![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/761873f01280bd5ef45518071bb88d15cba9410c\/236_0_4202_3361\/master\/4202.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=c1139f70c162d67157363b5c6ae53fb9\" "\\"To")
Artificial intelligence will replace creativity with something closer to magical wishing. The challenge for future generations will be dealing with the feeling of emptiness that leaves us with\nIn the German fairytale The Fisherman and His Wife, an old man one day catches a strange fish: a talking flounder. It turns out that an enchanted prince is trapped inside this fish and that it can therefore grant any wish. The man\u2019s wife, Ilsebill, is delighted and wishes for increasingly excessive things. She turns their miserable hut into a castle, but that is not enough; eventually she wants to become the pope and, finally, God. This enrages the elements; the sea turns dark and she is transformed back into her original impoverished state. The moral of the story: don\u2019t wish for anything you\u2019re not entitled to.
\nSeveral variations of this classic fairytale motif are known. Sometimes, the wishes are not so much excessive or offensive to the divine order of the world, but simply clumsy or contradictory, such as in Charles Perrault\u2019s The Ridiculous Wishes. Or, as in WW Jacobs\u2019 1902 horror story The Monkey\u2019s Paw, their wishes unintentionally harm someone who is actually much closer to them than the object of their desire. Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Artificial intelligence will replace creativity with something closer to magical wishing. The challenge for future generations will be dealing with the feeling of emptiness that leaves us with In the German fairytale The Fisherman and His Wife, an old man one day catches a strange fish: a talking flounder. It turns out that an enchanted …<\/p>\n