Ben Elton has made a career out of sharing feelings of inadequacy, but even he is dumbfounded by the stupidity of humanity in the AI age.
AI, for those not in the know, is the commonly used abbreviation for Artificial Intelligence. And in Elton's eyes it is bringing out the worst, and most absurd, human traits.
His new live show, Authentic Stupidity, is coming to Australia in March. It's based on the premise that even though AI is an existential threat to humanity that promises to render all human life meaningless, it's the authentic stupidity of humans that we should be worried about.
"The internet is destroying democracy because we're too stupid to tell the difference between verifiable fact and arse porridge," he says.
"I talk about the juxtaposition between human ingenuity and human inability to cope with the philosophical challenges of our ingenuity. The first thing the internet becomes awash with? Porn and conspiracy theories.
"The authentic stupidity is coupled with a fiendish ingenuity. We're basically too clever for our own good."
He clearly feels strongly about this.
"I do! If AI is the greatest threat to our humanity, well, we've allowed it to be," Elton says.
"Clearly we are so stupid that we let a bunch of unelected, unaccountable, tax-avoiding billionaires floating in their yachts off Malibu or blasting off in their dick-shaped rockets up to private space stations to come up with technology that they themselves admit is going to put us all out of work in 10 years.
"Can you imagine if a terrorist went on the television and said 'We have a mission to render humanity redundant within a decade'? But because it's a bunch of billionaires we're like 'Oh well, apparently AI is going to be able to write a whole bunch of new Beatles songs'.
"So that's the kind of stupidity I start with and then I move on to a general deconstruction of all the things that are either delighting or irritating me, the way I always do."
Elton's multi-award-winning career spans four decades and includes seminal and groundbreaking television shows (The Young Ones, Blackadder, Upstart Crow), West End plays (Popcorn, Upstart Crow), West End musicals (We Will Rock You, The Beautiful Game, Close up: The Twiggy Musical), best-selling novels (Stark, Dead Famous, Two Brothers) and feature films (Maybe Baby, Three Summers, All is True). His Channel 4 one-off revival of Friday Night Live won the BAFTA for Comedy Entertainment Programme 2023.
If he sounds averse to change, he's not. Elton has been astute and progressive in his social commentary over the years.
He's just concerned. It's as simple as that.
"The world is so complicated and terrifying that being stupid is a very tempting and comfortable option, and unscrupulous politicians have recognised this and they're encouraging people to be stupid," he says.
"They're saying that complex problems of the world can be fixed with three-word slogans.
"Stupidity is being weaponised. It could destroy the planet. Politicians saying the jury is still out on climate change, I mean, that is weaponised stupidity."
Elton believes "good comedy" connects people and can have positive outcomes. His is an observational humour, relatable, not intended to offend.
"What laughter does is expose our shared humanity ... not if it's bad laughter, not if it's a comic massaging a prejudice to get a cheap joke from the majority of the audience, that's bad comedy. But good comedy is always about a shared sense of inadequacy, a shared sense of weakness," he says.
"It's a sharing of the essential smallness of humanity, and in that respect it is a celebration of humanity because if we could only see how small we are, we would be far better at managing our planet.
"When you are in a stand-up situation, at least with me, it is a community; the laughter is a bond between many different types of people and it's a very beautiful and exhilarating thing to do.
"I don't think people are stupid, although some people are, but we collectively act quite stupidly or absurdly. I observe and comment on that."
And he's not running out of material, either. The 2024 US election is a case in point, although he's unlikely to talk much about it on the Australian leg of his tour.
"I admit that there is very little to say. You know the old cliche, it's self-satirising," he says.
"It's very difficult to know where to start to find the funny in such resurgent fascism, I mean, there's no other way of putting it, but there's still a lot to analyse and unpack.
"The display of toxic masculinity, the resurgence of a kind of brutally, unashamedly toxic idea of what it is to be a man becoming central to a political party ... All the woes of the world are caused by people, almost exclusively men, and communities solve them."
But it's not all doom and gloom.
"At the end of the day, I use AI as a hook from which to hang what I do, which is exploring the absurdity of the human condition, starting with myself," he says.
"That's what I think comedy can do, and why I think that, in the long run, when it's done properly, it can be a positive force."
