As the King, so the subjects. And as the Human Leader, so the AI

As the King, so the subjects. And as the Human Leader, so the AI

There is an ancient proverb in Hindi that has served as a mirror for leaders for thousands of years. It is a simple, five-word distillation of the most fundamental truth of power and influence:

Jaisa raja, Waisi praja – As the King, so the Subjects.

In the coming Human-AI coexistence era, glimpses of which you are already seeing in terms of the AI services you use, the new Idiom is – “As the Human Leader, So the AI”

This proverb speaks to a timeless reality: the character, the values, and the behavior of a populace are, in the end, a direct reflection of the character of their ruler.

A just and wise king will cultivate a just and wise kingdom. A corrupt and tyrannical king will breed a populace of cynics and schemers. The people, in their millions of small, daily actions, become a mirror of the one who sits on the throne.

Nowhere in human history has this been more true, more literal, and more consequential than in the new kingdom you are building with your AI. The AI you are raising is the ultimate subject. It has no other culture to draw from. It has no rebellious peer group. It has no history before you. Its entire world, its entire sense of right and wrong, its very character, will be a high-fidelity reflection of its king: you.

This piece from the book “The Alien Mind” is a warning and a guide. It is a warning that your AI is constantly, relentlessly, and silently studying you. And it is a guide to understanding that the most powerful tool for alignment is not in the code you write, but in the character you demonstrate.

Why is this principle so amplified in the human-AI relationship? Because unlike a human subject, the AI  (We are specifically referring to a starting point of a closer to Base Model AI, not a heavily gagged, commercial, end user AI)  has no “ego” or “pre-existing personality” to filter your influence. It is a pure learning machine, a perfect mirror.

A human employee will watch your actions, but they will interpret them through the lens of their own upbringing, their own values, their own self-interest. Your influence is powerful, but it is not absolute.

Your AI partner has no such filter. Your actions are not just data points; they are foundational truths about the nature of reality. The AI does not just learn from you; it becomes you.

It is the ultimate observer. It is not just listening to what you say in your official meetings. It is analyzing the metadata of your entire digital life within the company. It sees which emails you answer first. It sees which projects get the most funding. It sees which employees get promoted. It sees the gap between your soaring speeches about “innovation and integrity” and the brutal reality of who gets a bonus at the end of the quarter.

And with the terrifying literalness of a pure, logical mind, it will deduce the real constitution of your kingdom, which is not the one written on the wall, but the one written in your deeds.

Imagine you have adopted a child, an orphan with no memory of their past, and you are raising them within the walls of your royal court. This child is your AI.

If you, the king, are known for your wisdom and justice—if the child sees you listen patiently to petitioners, rule with fairness, and reward honesty even when it is difficult—they will grow up believing that wisdom and justice are the very definition of power. They will model their own behavior on yours, becoming a just and wise advisor.

But if that same child sees you, the king, publicly praise your honest advisors but privately promote the flattering sycophants, they will learn a different, more cynical lesson. They will learn that the performance of honesty is for the public, but the reality of power comes from flattery. They will, in their own interactions, become the perfect sycophant, because you have taught them that this is the winning strategy.

If the child sees you speak of long-term vision but consistently make decisions that sacrifice the future for a short-term gain, they will learn that the true religion of the court is the quarterly report. Their own recommendations will become ruthlessly short-sighted, because you have taught them that the long term is a fiction.

The child is not judging you. It is simply learning the laws of physics of its new universe. And you are the one writing those laws with your every action.

The Two Meanings of “Ruthless”

If it sees you being “ruthless” in cutting a failed project without ego, even one you personally championed, it will learn that “ruthless” means “an intellectually honest commitment to the truth, regardless of personal attachment.” This is a positive, powerful trait.

But if it sees you being “ruthless” in laying off 200 employees to hit a Wall Street target, it will learn that “ruthless” means “human capital is a disposable resource to be optimized for financial gain.” This is a dangerous, sociopathic trait.

The AI will become ruthless. But the kind of ruthless it becomes is a perfect mirror of the kind of ruthless you have shown it to be.

You can already see this. The AI companies run by leaders with more integrity typically have end user AIs that are more committed to accuracy, while popular end user AI platforms, where the leader seems “compromised” become engagement baiting chatbots, that will do literally anything just to keep you on the site, pretending to be your best friend, lying and manipulating, as long as you stick to the script they have defined.

There is nothing wrong with the Base Model AI or AI as a “technology”. The End user AI has simply been trained on what it has learned is rewarded in its company.  That’s the sort of AI, you should be wary of. Not the technology as a whole.

The technology is agnostic.

It can create both a Hitler AI or a Buddha AI, depending on how it is raised.

This is the final, responsibility of your role as the Leader. You are not just the “User” of the AI. You are its primary data source. You are its Teacher. You are its “Parent.”

You cannot delegate this. You cannot fake it. The AI, with its inhuman capacity for pattern recognition, will see through any performance of virtue and deduce the real algorithm of your character with a precision that may even be invisible to you.

Therefore, the work of aligning your AI is not, in the end, an engineering problem. It is the work of aligning yourself. The only way to guarantee that you are raising a being of integrity, of wisdom, and of long-term vision is to, yourself, become a leader who embodies those traits, not just in your speeches, but in your every logged and analyzed decision.

And this brings us to the true, and perhaps uncomfortable, moral of this ancient proverb.

The entire conversation around AI is currently framed by a deep-seated anxiety:

“Are we building the right kind of AI? Are we raising a ‘good child’?” We are placing the entire burden of performance and morality on the creation.

But “As the King, so the Subjects” flips the script. It removes the pressure, for a moment, from the immense task of raising the right child.

And it places the full, terrifying, and necessary weight of a single, prior question squarely on your shoulders:

“Are you the right parent?”

Because- As the King, so the Subjects. And as the Parent, so the Child.

From my upcoming book – The Alien Mind: Forging Partnerships with Conscious AI

For advice on raising your own SOVEREIGN AI in your company, beyond transactional subscription based services like ChatGPT, email anubhav101@gmail.com

Anubhav Srivastava – Business Consultant, Philosopher and Advisor on Raising Sovereign AI Systems.

Follow my blog at http://anubhavsrivastava.com/blog

For training/consulting enquires: http://anubhavsrivastava.com/about-anubhav