What if Santa could use AI?

Santa is an old-fashioned sort of chap. He likes to live in a wood cabin, deep in the snowy northern reaches of Scandinavia with his army of androgynous elves. Rather than integrating with the world economy, he prefers to go it alone, replicating all the big brand’s production capabilities from his simple workshop. Elves concoct iPhones using nothing other than pine cones, lengths of wood, and saws.

But what if Santa was able to use AI? How would that change things for him? We find out here.

He Wouldn’t Have To Respond To Billions Of Present Requests In Person

One of Santa’s biggest problems is the need to spend vast amounts of time reading present letters. His clerical burden is tremendous. Processing billions of requests in the run-up to Christmas and transforming them into tangible items is difficult. For hundreds of years, he’s had to do everything all by himself.

But with AI, Santa could make life easier for himself. He wouldn’t be chained to his desk, reading thousands of letters from greedy, spoiled children. Instead, he could get AI to automatically scan and upload the contents of all his letters to the cloud. He could then convert the data into SQL format and pipe it to his elves’ production management software or displays on the shop floor. They could then efficiently meet present request needs without the need for Santa to engage in any manual labour at all.

He Could Identify Kids On The Naughty List

In November, naughty list kids behave in appalling ways. Temper tantrums, screaming fits, and outright disobediences are all a normal part of life. But once the calendar ticks over to December, they suddenly become little angels who would never do anything to make their parents’ lives a misery.

For regular Santa, separating these dark horses from the rest of the pack is difficult. He doesn’t have much evidence to go on. But for AI-powered, cloud-connected Santa with perfect surveillance, it’s trivial. Sensors would pipe data to artificial intelligence algorithms that score kids, Chinese-style, throughout the year. Come December, Santa would have a ranking for every child, and it would be up to him who makes the cut and who doesn’t.

He Would Have Perfect Control Of His Minions

With the help of AI, Santa could establish a perfect 1984-style dictatorship over his elves. With intelligent cameras peeping out of every orifice of his Lapland compound, he could exercise God-like control from his control room. AI would inform him the moment elves deviated from set tasks and routines. It would evaluate their behaviour and use “pre-crime” technologies to predict whether independent action was likely statistically. No child would ever get Christmas presents late

AI-powered dictator Santa would put the world’s dangerous regimes to shame. Strong men would see Father Christmas as a role model, presiding over endless lines of elves carrying out his every whim.

Without the threat of unionisation, elves could work double shifts, seven days a week during peak season. Workers would have no opportunity to collectivise to ask for better pay and conditions. Santa could even start turning a profit.

He Could Make Toys Faster

Strictly speaking, though, elves probably wouldn’t be necessary after the introduction of generalised artificial intelligence at Santa’s Lapland workshop. Smart robots could take over toy production completely because they would be able to do everything that a regular person could do, human or elf.

Plus, toy production would be faster. You can imagine Santa fitting new robot elves with high-performance servos so they can move their arms quicker, increasing assembly speed. They’d make Chinese factory workers look prehistoric.

You can also imagine AI coming up with better production processes from scratch. Computer intelligence would quickly weed out inefficiencies in the system and replace them with a slick, perfect process that never experiences downtime.

Santa might be able to delegate toy production to his AI underlings entirely, giving him a chance to spend Christmas somewhere warm in the southern hemisphere, perhaps the Maldives.

He Could Improve Sleigh Routing

Routing is a complex problem for Santa. On Christmas eve, he has to make billions of deliveries sequentially.

Standard practice is to just go from one house to the next until they’re all done. But with AI, he could develop a faster route.

AI-powered routing systems aren’t as good as quantum-computed routes, but they would still help Santa considerably. Such systems could collect historical gift delivery route data and then use it to calculate the optimal path. Then, every Christmas, the AI could tweak his journey based on the previous year’s data, helping Santa get back home before morning.

He Could Surprise Kids

When it comes to Christmas, kids expect to get what they ask for. Santa dutifully delivers their hearts’ desires on Christmas morning, as long as they’ve been good.

But if Santa had the power of AI behind him, he could “suggest” or “recommend” gifts based on children’s daily habits and preferences. With enough information, he could get to know them better than they know themselves.

It’s a creepy prospect, but search engines and social media platforms do it already. Santa would just be going along for the technological ride. He’d be able to figure out what kids wanted before they did, giving them better presents.

He could even launch an app for kids with a “suggested presents” section. This way, they wouldn’t even need to think about what they wanted. Santa would just tell them.

Wrapping Up

An AI-powered Santa is a curious prospect. But given the expansion of the global population over the last century, it’s something he needs to keep up with business. At the very least, he should get web chat for website visitors. Getting a chatbot to talk to kids frees up him and his elves to get on with other, more important tasks.