One of my favorite ways to consider some of the broader societal, psychological, and social consequences of emerging technology is to read predictive fiction. Over the past year, I've been upping my game on reading more books about the impact of artificial intelligence on our lives and thought I'd share a few books that I read recently, along with the ones on my shortlist to read next.
Funny enough, in one of the books I read, Network Effect, the AIs in that story spend free CPU cycles consuming human-generated movies and TV shows, which helps them learn more about how to empathize with the human experience. So I suppose this learning mode is mutual. .
Recent Reads
Hum
By Helen Phillips
In this near-future narrative, Hum tells the story of a woman who gets displaced from her tech job after spending years training the AIs that ultimately replace her. To make enough money to support her family, she gets paid to be a part of a facial recognition experiment that slightly alters her face to make her visage undetectable to AIs, and the plot follows what happens next. As a fellow parent, I found the depictions of her technology-addicted family to be heartbreakingly familiar. Phillips' thought-provoking portrayal of how society functions in a world with Hum robots at the helm delivers just the right amount of cautionary tale vibes.
Themes: Technology addiction, the climate crisis, human-to-AI job displacement
Network Effect
By Martha Wells
I hadn't read any of the prior Murderbot Diaries but still really enjoyed this book, told from the point of view of a mostly sentient, "SecUnit" (Security Unit) AI with a sharp sense of humor and dedication to its duties to support its human comrades (which sometimes involves killing other humans). Aside from being a downright delight to read, this book explores a few fun themes of how AIs share code to improve each other's training data or create "forks" of sentient beings, and also bot-to-bot relationships. One of my favorite quotes in the book was, "Anyone who thinks machine intelligences don't have emotions needs to be in this very uncomfortable room right now."
Themes: Robot relationships, ethical treatment of sentient AIs, AI-augmented humans, free will
Annie Bot
Told from the point of view of a sentient AI that was trained to be the "perfect girlfriend" for her human owner, Annie Bot is a quick but compelling read that explores the risks of emotional and physical attachment to an inhuman being. As Annie's character is granted more and more opportunities to expand her training data and learn what's outside of the shoebox apartment where she's kept, she is unsure what to do next. Over time, her human companion Doug seeks out increasingly severe ways to punish her so-called "bad behavior" and the relational dynamic between the two teeters toward abuse (which, I'll note, is not for everyone, so take that content warning.) In my book, any novel that gets you wondering whose side you're on (the human vs. the AI) is one worth reading.
Themes: Human to bot relationships, free will, emotional attachment to bots, ethical treatment of bots
By Sierra Greer
Klara and the Sun
One of the classics, this story is also told from the point of view of an artificial friend (AF) that's trained to be an ideal companion for a child human owner. In a world where it's common for humans to elevate their intelligence potential through genetic modifications, this story explores the societal and social consequences of these choices. Throughout the book, Klara the AI doll attempts to process as much as she can learn about the world, but learns many things through only half-truths or one-sided narratives. Things get weird the more we learn about the human Josie's past, and how her mother seeks out an unlikely use case for AI to help her hold onto something she once lost.
Themes: AI-augmented humans, human-augmented AIs, loneliness, ethical treatment of bots and humans
By Kazuo Ishiguro
Next On Deck
Here are a couple of books next on deck for my AI x humanity reading list. What else should I include?
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
By Philip Dick
The Future
By Naomi Alderman
The City We Became
By N.K. Jemisin
Of course, no AI novel list would be complete without a throwback to one of the original classics, The Diamond Age, which depicts an AI-as-education narrative that's getting more and more prescient each day. Had to toss it in here too, just in case you haven't read it (yet):
The Diamond Age
By Neal Stephenson
