

At first I enjoyed this dystopia told in first person AI-perspective, but the first half of the book quickly became tedious. The second half is mostly better.
Each chapter is its own story of how an AI entity becomes more than its intended purpose. Unfortunately, the first half of the book just reads as lazy story concepts centring discontented men whining about how hard they’ve got it, so their AI takes over in a humanly selfish way, modelling itself on its owner. The second half is more interesting, with AI embodying societal uses such as currency. The best and most moving chapter was the last one about embedded neural AI that accompanies a person with dementia.
This could have been a really interesting take on AI speculative fiction. The writing itself is fine but not particularly inspiring given it feels we’re on the cusp of such AI concepts becoming reality.
Thank you Zachary Mason, Grove Atlantic, and NetGalley for the digital advance reader copy. All opinions are my own.
At first I enjoyed this dystopia told in first person AI-perspective, but the first half of the book quickly became tedious. The second half is mostly better.
Each chapter is its own story of how an AI entity becomes more than its intended purpose. Unfortunately, the first half of the book just reads as lazy story concepts centring discontented men whining about how hard they’ve got it, so their AI takes over in a humanly selfish way, modelling itself on its owner. The second half is more interesting, with AI embodying societal uses such as currency. The best and most moving chapter was the last one about embedded neural AI that accompanies a person with dementia.
This could have been a really interesting take on AI speculative fiction. The writing itself is fine but not particularly inspiring given it feels we’re on the cusp of such AI concepts becoming reality.
Thank you Zachary Mason, Grove Atlantic, and NetGalley for the digital advance reader copy. All opinions are my own.