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Competing Against Immortals
I was lost in a book when a voice came on from the car’s speaker. “Mr. Weber, please exit the vehicle.”
I couldn’t believe I had already arrived. It felt like I had just summoned the car a few minutes ago, and now I was already where the old Department of Motor Vehicles building used to be. Either the car had driven itself too fast, or maybe I was just too engrossed in my book. Both, probably.
I stepped outside and onto the curb. And I didn’t even need to move from there, because that’s where the line ended. There must have been hundreds of people waiting outside in the cold, and many more already inside.
I zipped up my jacket and brought out my tablet to continue reading. It was quite possibly the greatest book I had ever read in my life. But I didn’t want to admit that opinion because I thought the exact same thing about the last ten books in this series I had been reading. I hadn’t so much as touched a fiction book since I started my law degree a decade ago, and now I couldn’t put them down. It didn’t help that this series had way more sequels than I had bargained for. It was probably all those years of only reading for school and work that heightened the pleasure of reading fiction.
I cringed, thinking about my old job I didn’t have anymore. I sighed and then went back to reading. The book demanded my total attention, and I happily obliged. I didn’t think about how I was in line for basic income. I didn’t think about the Artificial Intelligences taking my job. I didn’t think, because the book was engrossing enough that I didn’t have to think about anything anymore.
I stood there for hours, not caring about the cold, not caring about anything. It was just me… and the book. Eventually I made my way inside, got a number, and got to sit and wait and read.
I probably would have read for days without a care in the world if not for a rather nosy woman.
“Watcha readin’?” she asked.
I blinked and somehow tore my eyes away from the page and onto the woman next to me. She wore immaculate clothing but didn’t seem to have a phone or AR glasses or anything to which to distract herself with. “Excuse me?” I said.
“You’re looking at that book like it’s your first-born child or something. Must be good.”
“Yeah… it uhh… is,” I stammered. I felt so embarrassed. I had talked eloquently for hours and hours at a time in my law practice. But just a few months without lawyering and suddenly I was barely coherent.
“What’s it about?” she asked, leaning over to look at what was on my screen.
“Uhh…” I shrank back, holding my tablet to my chest.
I did not want to admit I was reading the kind of crap I actively hated reading ten years ago. It was one of those stories where the entire book was just two people talking in a coffee shop and nothing happens, one of those “literary” stories I would get forced to read in an English class and would passionately hate. But this book was somehow different. It was surprisingly interesting and engaging in a way no book of its genre had ever been to me before.
“I— okay, look. I’m not one for small talk Ms… uhh…”
“Doctor Grant,” she said.
“Doctor?”
She blushed and then looked down at the floor. “I guess it probably is just ‘Ms.’ now, huh? Just call me Lacy.”
“Sorry… I didn’t mean to—“
“It’s okay,” she shrugged. “The whole world is going through this right now. The only jobs left are programmers, some artists… and well…” She pointed to the humans manning the booths at the head of the office, “Bureaucrats and politicians that mandate they still keep their jobs.”
“And writers,” I added.
“No, the writers are AI’s now too.”
I looked down at my tablet and then back to her. “No, writing is an inherently human thing to do. I know some AI can write, but it doesn’t hold a candle to anything a human can write.”
“If an AI can be a better surgeon than I was,” said Lacy, staring at her hands. “Than they can be a better writer too.”
“That’s not a good comparison. Surgery requires sharp precision and consistency, and robots can do that better than any human.”
“Don’t forget that almost all doctors have to dabble in psychology too,” she said, looking back to me. “No one is going to get surgery under someone that can’t reassure and explain to them what’s going to happen. That reassurance was half the job of a doctor and not many noticed how crucial that role was. It was only when AI started to be able to perform the psychological reassurance process just as well as a human could, that doctors started to lose their jobs.”
My hand reached up and rubbed the back of my neck.
“So if an AI is capable of advanced human psychological tasks, they can write books too.”
I stiffened. “There’s no way that’s true. No one would read a book written by an AI—we’d be able to tell immediately.”
“How would you tell?” she asked.
“It would be obvious!”
She stared at me incredulously.
“Books have characters speaking to each other for long periods of time. There’s setting and world building and consistency and plot and everything in between. And writing is work—real work and effort that requires inspiration and deep thought.”
“And you don’t think the AI that took your job is capable of all that?”
“Of course not.”
“What was your old job anyway?” she asked.
I sat up straighter. “Weber and Fischer Associates Law Practice,” I said as if I was answering a phone or was mingling at one of the many parties I would have handed my business card out at.
“You seriously think that the AI that writes patents and legal briefs wouldn’t be able to write fiction?”
“I— umm… the AI just happened to be cheaper. And besides, an AI needs inputs for it to have outputs. For a lawyer AI, the inputs are the case and the laws and all the information pertaining to the parties involved. And the outputs are all the legal searching and confirmation. Stories don’t have any inputs, it just comes from within the writer as inspiration, and at the end is a book.”
“That’s not how writing stories works,” she countered. “Even human writers have inputs and outputs just like an AI.”
“No they don’t,” I argued back. “Writing comes from within.”
“The best writers are the best readers. They input all the writing given to them by others and then they output an amalgamation of the previous stories they’ve read, adding twists and turns onto it enough to make something different.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that.
“An AI can do the exact same thing, but better. An AI is not limited by the human lifespan and can read every book in existence before writing its own. A human is incapable of reading that much and therefore can’t become as good of a writer as an AI is capable of.”
I slouched and looked down at my tablet that was in sleep mode. “Look, if you would pick up a book and start reading, you would know that it wasn’t something an AI could do. There’s too much nuance! There’s too much stuff in stories that an AI is not capable of synthesizing. You can’t confine the process of writing to a simple algorithm.”
“An algorithm? Do you really think all of this is about algorithms at this point?” She gestured around the quiet room.
The previously wealthy in the room were wearing full augmented reality glasses and headphones, playing with pets and talking with friends across the planet that only they could see. Most held onto a phone or tablet, playing games, scrolling through photos or reading something. It would have been fine, except these were people that were skilled at their jobs. Translators, accountants, lawyers, doctors and everything in between. All of them reduced to waiting in line to be on the list to receive a monthly check from the government.
“This isn’t a single algorithm,” said Lacy. “This is what happens when programmers coded neuron for neuron every single cell of the human brain. We can only think at a maximum of 120 meters per second. But a programmed brain can think at light speed, spending decades learning in the time it takes for us to blink. Imagine if your favorite author lived for another ten million years, and then with all that writing experience kept on writing. A normal human author, bound by the limits of their lifespan, can’t compete.”
I just stared at her.
“We’re trying to compete against immortals, and we just can’t win.”
It felt like I had accidentally swallowed a block of ice, as if I was being frozen from the inside and my entire body was drowning in a sudden wave of hopeless cold depression.
I fought the feeling the only way I knew how.
I shrugged at her and went back to my book. Almost instantaneously I felt relaxed as I started reading the words. This was an intriguing, well thought out book. And—
“That’s it? You’re just going to escape?” asked Lacy.
I nodded my head.
“Oh…” she said, some color disappearing from her voice.
I popped my head back up and looked around the room at everyone on their own devices. “Do you want something to read?” I asked.
“No, all the media around here has been made by AI. And I just get depressed thinking about it, so I try not to consume anything that’s not written by humans.”
My eyebrows furrowed. This woman was by far one of the most alien creatures I had ever met. “Well… the story I’m reading was written by a human.”
“Are you sure? What’s the publisher?”
“Umm…” I swallowed, and set a virtual bookmark in the eReader before jumping to the title page the software always automatically skipped anyway. “Trace books.”
“If it’s not HumanFirst or Solunar Publishing, it’s an AI book publishing company.”
I scowled at her. She was just some sad, bored woman who got a kick of ruining other people’s days.
“Look, I know you’re bored and want someone to talk to,” I said. “But can I just get back to my book?”
Her shoulders sagged and she didn’t say anything after that.
It didn’t take much longer before her number was called.
I sat for several more hours, completely absorbed in the story I was reading. Only once when I finished another book in the series did my attention wander and Lacy’s comments about the origin of the books make me wonder. But then I started another sequel and it was too intriguing for me to be distracted anymore.
My tablet pinged that it was my turn to be called up.
The despair of what I was doing finally hit me full-force as I said the words aloud to the human behind the counter.
“I would like to apply for basic income.”
I gave her all the papers she wanted, and the process was surprisingly fast. When it was all over, the bureaucrat said that I would find the money in my government bank account.
I thanked her and scheduled a pickup, which was there thirty seconds later when I walked outside.
It had gotten much darker and thick white snow was falling heavily around me. I shivered and climbed into the car. I watched this time as my ride went onto the highway. It was the usual busy traffic, with cars synchronized to go at two hundred kilometers per hour.
I looked down at my tablet and then made a search query.
My insides chilled as I read that she had been right.
The series I had been reading was written by an AI.
I hadn’t even noticed what was happening to other industries. I had been so focused on the devastation of losing my law practice. Every book being published, every television show on TV, nearly every interaction humans had now, all of it was prepared and provided by AI's. So many industries had been toppled in the AI revolution, and the dominos kept falling.
Curious, I brought up a writing sample from one of the few remaining human only publishers. It was barely readable. I was too used to reading the perfect books AI’s had written that nothing by a human could even compare.
“Mr. Weber, please exit the vehicle.”
I got out of the car and walked to my apartment, the bitter winter outside clawing its way inside me. I threw open the front door and shot my eyes back onto my tablet, bringing back up the story I had been reading.
The door shut behind me and the warm story shut out the oppressive cold that had attempted to envelop me.
It was such a good story I didn’t want to put it down.
So I never did.
I couldn’t believe I had already arrived. It felt like I had just summoned the car a few minutes ago, and now I was already where the old Department of Motor Vehicles building used to be. Either the car had driven itself too fast, or maybe I was just too engrossed in my book. Both, probably.
I stepped outside and onto the curb. And I didn’t even need to move from there, because that’s where the line ended. There must have been hundreds of people waiting outside in the cold, and many more already inside.
I zipped up my jacket and brought out my tablet to continue reading. It was quite possibly the greatest book I had ever read in my life. But I didn’t want to admit that opinion because I thought the exact same thing about the last ten books in this series I had been reading. I hadn’t so much as touched a fiction book since I started my law degree a decade ago, and now I couldn’t put them down. It didn’t help that this series had way more sequels than I had bargained for. It was probably all those years of only reading for school and work that heightened the pleasure of reading fiction.
I cringed, thinking about my old job I didn’t have anymore. I sighed and then went back to reading. The book demanded my total attention, and I happily obliged. I didn’t think about how I was in line for basic income. I didn’t think about the Artificial Intelligences taking my job. I didn’t think, because the book was engrossing enough that I didn’t have to think about anything anymore.
I stood there for hours, not caring about the cold, not caring about anything. It was just me… and the book. Eventually I made my way inside, got a number, and got to sit and wait and read.
I probably would have read for days without a care in the world if not for a rather nosy woman.
“Watcha readin’?” she asked.
I blinked and somehow tore my eyes away from the page and onto the woman next to me. She wore immaculate clothing but didn’t seem to have a phone or AR glasses or anything to which to distract herself with. “Excuse me?” I said.
“You’re looking at that book like it’s your first-born child or something. Must be good.”
“Yeah… it uhh… is,” I stammered. I felt so embarrassed. I had talked eloquently for hours and hours at a time in my law practice. But just a few months without lawyering and suddenly I was barely coherent.
“What’s it about?” she asked, leaning over to look at what was on my screen.
“Uhh…” I shrank back, holding my tablet to my chest.
I did not want to admit I was reading the kind of crap I actively hated reading ten years ago. It was one of those stories where the entire book was just two people talking in a coffee shop and nothing happens, one of those “literary” stories I would get forced to read in an English class and would passionately hate. But this book was somehow different. It was surprisingly interesting and engaging in a way no book of its genre had ever been to me before.
“I— okay, look. I’m not one for small talk Ms… uhh…”
“Doctor Grant,” she said.
“Doctor?”
She blushed and then looked down at the floor. “I guess it probably is just ‘Ms.’ now, huh? Just call me Lacy.”
“Sorry… I didn’t mean to—“
“It’s okay,” she shrugged. “The whole world is going through this right now. The only jobs left are programmers, some artists… and well…” She pointed to the humans manning the booths at the head of the office, “Bureaucrats and politicians that mandate they still keep their jobs.”
“And writers,” I added.
“No, the writers are AI’s now too.”
I looked down at my tablet and then back to her. “No, writing is an inherently human thing to do. I know some AI can write, but it doesn’t hold a candle to anything a human can write.”
“If an AI can be a better surgeon than I was,” said Lacy, staring at her hands. “Than they can be a better writer too.”
“That’s not a good comparison. Surgery requires sharp precision and consistency, and robots can do that better than any human.”
“Don’t forget that almost all doctors have to dabble in psychology too,” she said, looking back to me. “No one is going to get surgery under someone that can’t reassure and explain to them what’s going to happen. That reassurance was half the job of a doctor and not many noticed how crucial that role was. It was only when AI started to be able to perform the psychological reassurance process just as well as a human could, that doctors started to lose their jobs.”
My hand reached up and rubbed the back of my neck.
“So if an AI is capable of advanced human psychological tasks, they can write books too.”
I stiffened. “There’s no way that’s true. No one would read a book written by an AI—we’d be able to tell immediately.”
“How would you tell?” she asked.
“It would be obvious!”
She stared at me incredulously.
“Books have characters speaking to each other for long periods of time. There’s setting and world building and consistency and plot and everything in between. And writing is work—real work and effort that requires inspiration and deep thought.”
“And you don’t think the AI that took your job is capable of all that?”
“Of course not.”
“What was your old job anyway?” she asked.
I sat up straighter. “Weber and Fischer Associates Law Practice,” I said as if I was answering a phone or was mingling at one of the many parties I would have handed my business card out at.
“You seriously think that the AI that writes patents and legal briefs wouldn’t be able to write fiction?”
“I— umm… the AI just happened to be cheaper. And besides, an AI needs inputs for it to have outputs. For a lawyer AI, the inputs are the case and the laws and all the information pertaining to the parties involved. And the outputs are all the legal searching and confirmation. Stories don’t have any inputs, it just comes from within the writer as inspiration, and at the end is a book.”
“That’s not how writing stories works,” she countered. “Even human writers have inputs and outputs just like an AI.”
“No they don’t,” I argued back. “Writing comes from within.”
“The best writers are the best readers. They input all the writing given to them by others and then they output an amalgamation of the previous stories they’ve read, adding twists and turns onto it enough to make something different.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that.
“An AI can do the exact same thing, but better. An AI is not limited by the human lifespan and can read every book in existence before writing its own. A human is incapable of reading that much and therefore can’t become as good of a writer as an AI is capable of.”
I slouched and looked down at my tablet that was in sleep mode. “Look, if you would pick up a book and start reading, you would know that it wasn’t something an AI could do. There’s too much nuance! There’s too much stuff in stories that an AI is not capable of synthesizing. You can’t confine the process of writing to a simple algorithm.”
“An algorithm? Do you really think all of this is about algorithms at this point?” She gestured around the quiet room.
The previously wealthy in the room were wearing full augmented reality glasses and headphones, playing with pets and talking with friends across the planet that only they could see. Most held onto a phone or tablet, playing games, scrolling through photos or reading something. It would have been fine, except these were people that were skilled at their jobs. Translators, accountants, lawyers, doctors and everything in between. All of them reduced to waiting in line to be on the list to receive a monthly check from the government.
“This isn’t a single algorithm,” said Lacy. “This is what happens when programmers coded neuron for neuron every single cell of the human brain. We can only think at a maximum of 120 meters per second. But a programmed brain can think at light speed, spending decades learning in the time it takes for us to blink. Imagine if your favorite author lived for another ten million years, and then with all that writing experience kept on writing. A normal human author, bound by the limits of their lifespan, can’t compete.”
I just stared at her.
“We’re trying to compete against immortals, and we just can’t win.”
It felt like I had accidentally swallowed a block of ice, as if I was being frozen from the inside and my entire body was drowning in a sudden wave of hopeless cold depression.
I fought the feeling the only way I knew how.
I shrugged at her and went back to my book. Almost instantaneously I felt relaxed as I started reading the words. This was an intriguing, well thought out book. And—
“That’s it? You’re just going to escape?” asked Lacy.
I nodded my head.
“Oh…” she said, some color disappearing from her voice.
I popped my head back up and looked around the room at everyone on their own devices. “Do you want something to read?” I asked.
“No, all the media around here has been made by AI. And I just get depressed thinking about it, so I try not to consume anything that’s not written by humans.”
My eyebrows furrowed. This woman was by far one of the most alien creatures I had ever met. “Well… the story I’m reading was written by a human.”
“Are you sure? What’s the publisher?”
“Umm…” I swallowed, and set a virtual bookmark in the eReader before jumping to the title page the software always automatically skipped anyway. “Trace books.”
“If it’s not HumanFirst or Solunar Publishing, it’s an AI book publishing company.”
I scowled at her. She was just some sad, bored woman who got a kick of ruining other people’s days.
“Look, I know you’re bored and want someone to talk to,” I said. “But can I just get back to my book?”
Her shoulders sagged and she didn’t say anything after that.
It didn’t take much longer before her number was called.
I sat for several more hours, completely absorbed in the story I was reading. Only once when I finished another book in the series did my attention wander and Lacy’s comments about the origin of the books make me wonder. But then I started another sequel and it was too intriguing for me to be distracted anymore.
My tablet pinged that it was my turn to be called up.
The despair of what I was doing finally hit me full-force as I said the words aloud to the human behind the counter.
“I would like to apply for basic income.”
I gave her all the papers she wanted, and the process was surprisingly fast. When it was all over, the bureaucrat said that I would find the money in my government bank account.
I thanked her and scheduled a pickup, which was there thirty seconds later when I walked outside.
It had gotten much darker and thick white snow was falling heavily around me. I shivered and climbed into the car. I watched this time as my ride went onto the highway. It was the usual busy traffic, with cars synchronized to go at two hundred kilometers per hour.
I looked down at my tablet and then made a search query.
My insides chilled as I read that she had been right.
The series I had been reading was written by an AI.
I hadn’t even noticed what was happening to other industries. I had been so focused on the devastation of losing my law practice. Every book being published, every television show on TV, nearly every interaction humans had now, all of it was prepared and provided by AI's. So many industries had been toppled in the AI revolution, and the dominos kept falling.
Curious, I brought up a writing sample from one of the few remaining human only publishers. It was barely readable. I was too used to reading the perfect books AI’s had written that nothing by a human could even compare.
“Mr. Weber, please exit the vehicle.”
I got out of the car and walked to my apartment, the bitter winter outside clawing its way inside me. I threw open the front door and shot my eyes back onto my tablet, bringing back up the story I had been reading.
The door shut behind me and the warm story shut out the oppressive cold that had attempted to envelop me.
It was such a good story I didn’t want to put it down.
So I never did.
I like the main idea of this, being conditioned to get away from anything negative by AI crafted entertainment is definitely unsettling. The future of automation in general is an interesting topic, and some of the things that Weber took for granted (the transportation system, and naming "Translators, accountants, lawyers, doctors" as victims of automation instead of the usual suspects) helped to establish where exactly we are in that timeline and what means to people like him.
But it was a bit odd to me that the one thing Weber really expressed concern over was whether or not AI could be good at story telling and human interaction. He doesn't seem to mind all that much that AI are better than he is at his own job. I think he's that way because of the conditioning, but if that's the case than why does he care about his books being written by AI at all? It might have helped to get into more detail about how the books made him feel, and why he valued those feelings. Finding out that an AI caused you to feel that way would be more upsetting than finding out an AI is responsible for extreme technical skill.
I also didn't really buy just how little Weber knew about his own world. It's not as if there's a global conspiracy to keep what they're talking about hidden, everything they talked about seemed like it would be common knowledge. Weber mentions that he was focused on his business, but even then it seems like he knows less about the state of AI than he should (did he not handle any cases relating to AI?).
But it was a bit odd to me that the one thing Weber really expressed concern over was whether or not AI could be good at story telling and human interaction. He doesn't seem to mind all that much that AI are better than he is at his own job. I think he's that way because of the conditioning, but if that's the case than why does he care about his books being written by AI at all? It might have helped to get into more detail about how the books made him feel, and why he valued those feelings. Finding out that an AI caused you to feel that way would be more upsetting than finding out an AI is responsible for extreme technical skill.
I also didn't really buy just how little Weber knew about his own world. It's not as if there's a global conspiracy to keep what they're talking about hidden, everything they talked about seemed like it would be common knowledge. Weber mentions that he was focused on his business, but even then it seems like he knows less about the state of AI than he should (did he not handle any cases relating to AI?).
This is super heavy-handed and yet I don't even know that I get any point at the end. AIs are bad, I guess?
There's nothing here that rises to challenge me or engage me. There's no sense of real world, no recognition of deeper implications of the rise of AI - the lack of need for lawyers is probably less because they can do the job and more because there's no more reason to have a legal system, I'd guess. Certainly the fact that there's universal basic income means politics is very very different from anything we've known. And god, why would anyone want to be a bureaucrat, when they could just not, and take money, and do whatever they want (including melting their brain I guess).
And on that crucial note, the device of 'perfect' books that practically hypnotize you feels incredibly shallow and alien. I suspect that I'm supposed to feel sad or regretful but it all feels so patently unrealistic that I almost find it funny instead? The protagonist certainly never seems to care. I wish this had been about Lacy instead; clearly there are people out there still writing books and going about their business being interesting characters. It definitely isn't the main character.
This is less of a story and more like the very very early stages of a thought experiment, with all the sophistication of your friend at the bar turning to say 'hey, what if computers could write books.' Clearly the author can write just fine, but this story seems like a spectacular misfire that grates against all of my sensibilities.
There's nothing here that rises to challenge me or engage me. There's no sense of real world, no recognition of deeper implications of the rise of AI - the lack of need for lawyers is probably less because they can do the job and more because there's no more reason to have a legal system, I'd guess. Certainly the fact that there's universal basic income means politics is very very different from anything we've known. And god, why would anyone want to be a bureaucrat, when they could just not, and take money, and do whatever they want (including melting their brain I guess).
And on that crucial note, the device of 'perfect' books that practically hypnotize you feels incredibly shallow and alien. I suspect that I'm supposed to feel sad or regretful but it all feels so patently unrealistic that I almost find it funny instead? The protagonist certainly never seems to care. I wish this had been about Lacy instead; clearly there are people out there still writing books and going about their business being interesting characters. It definitely isn't the main character.
This is less of a story and more like the very very early stages of a thought experiment, with all the sophistication of your friend at the bar turning to say 'hey, what if computers could write books.' Clearly the author can write just fine, but this story seems like a spectacular misfire that grates against all of my sensibilities.
One thing I'd like to state, the punchline is very predictable. First you focus a lot of attention on how the narrator has found this new totally awesome books series, and later he scoffs at the very idea of AIs writing books. The moment he says: "No one would read a book written by an AI—we’d be able to tell immediately," any moderately savvy reader will see the ending a mile away.
Agreed with >>JudgeDeadd, though I'll go further: it's not just that he scoffs at AI authors, it's that the subject just keeps coming up, and he just keeps repeating the same denial over and over again. (Six times, in fact, plus a short explanation of his position which arguably is #7 but at least moves beyond simple naysaying.) With such heavy signaling there's only one place the story can go. Forget Chekov's gun, you've got Chekov's howitzer.
(Today's trivia: A howitzer isn't named after a person, like I first thought — it's a Czech loan-word — and thus the term isn't capitalized.)
AI pushing humans out of jobs is an interesting topic, to be certain, and I wish I could say that it grabbed me, but … I'm already pretty familiar with the idea of artificial intelligence outstripping human capabilities, and already a supporter of Universal Basic Income for that reason among others, and I guess this just didn't feel to me like it was presenting the topic in a way that engaged beyond the basics?
I do appreciate that you at least took AI job displacement to its logical conclusion, framing it with UBI. That's going to be the big social story of artificial intelligence, for certain, and pretty much the only way I've heard of to avoid economic apocalypse. Heck, within possibly a decade we're looking at self-driving vehicles, and, well … So this is a shockwave that will ripple through our society sooner rather than later, and a premise worth writing about. Just, none of this is new to me. So this could just be a target audience mismatch here.
But even if other readers find your core conflict more compelling, you need to fix that repeated denial-hammering. Even three of the same blunt denial gets tedious and makes your protagonist look willfully dumb, but at least there you get to frame your structure around The Rule of Three; six is beyond overkill. And your protagonist's blanket denials really hamper your ability to dig more deeply into the interesting corners of the topic — because it just keeps coming back to him sticking his fingers in his ears and saying "nuh-uh", then once you've brought your reader around to Dr. Grant's side, she has nothing new to say, just preaching to the choir.
Tier: Almost There
(Today's trivia: A howitzer isn't named after a person, like I first thought — it's a Czech loan-word — and thus the term isn't capitalized.)
AI pushing humans out of jobs is an interesting topic, to be certain, and I wish I could say that it grabbed me, but … I'm already pretty familiar with the idea of artificial intelligence outstripping human capabilities, and already a supporter of Universal Basic Income for that reason among others, and I guess this just didn't feel to me like it was presenting the topic in a way that engaged beyond the basics?
I do appreciate that you at least took AI job displacement to its logical conclusion, framing it with UBI. That's going to be the big social story of artificial intelligence, for certain, and pretty much the only way I've heard of to avoid economic apocalypse. Heck, within possibly a decade we're looking at self-driving vehicles, and, well … So this is a shockwave that will ripple through our society sooner rather than later, and a premise worth writing about. Just, none of this is new to me. So this could just be a target audience mismatch here.
But even if other readers find your core conflict more compelling, you need to fix that repeated denial-hammering. Even three of the same blunt denial gets tedious and makes your protagonist look willfully dumb, but at least there you get to frame your structure around The Rule of Three; six is beyond overkill. And your protagonist's blanket denials really hamper your ability to dig more deeply into the interesting corners of the topic — because it just keeps coming back to him sticking his fingers in his ears and saying "nuh-uh", then once you've brought your reader around to Dr. Grant's side, she has nothing new to say, just preaching to the choir.
Tier: Almost There
I think what really makes this story is the setting. The whole idea of a computer-run society that was conquered by the machines not through violence but convenience was an interesting concept. I also liked how machines have become so big that people just accept them, even in the government that seems to be regulating them.
That being said, the story's ending is extremely predictable. I wouldn't mind this if the journey there was done in an interesting way, but it just seems to be the usual "AI is bad and humans who use it are sheep" moral that a lot of sci-fi boils down to. On top of that, the characters aren't done uniquely; the main character is just the typical dummy who buys into the machines, while Lacy is the profound individual who stands up against them. One is right and the other wrong, with no in-between. Wouldn't it be far more interesting if the main character was actually right about some parts and Lacy somewhat short-sighted? For instance, she goes on about how replacing doctors has caused unintentional psychological effects. Fair enough, but Weber could point out that if a robotic brain is as fast as they are in this world, them being surgeons is actually far better. The human error that could accidentally nick an artery or become unsteady would be eliminated, and deaths in surgery would go down dramatically. Through this, Lacy would have a deeper shade of character, making her individuality against the machines more tainted by anger and jealousy than simply just 'being right'. But this isn't the case, so the story largely suffers because of the black and white shades it tries to paint in a world that doesn't really fit that perspective.
A good setting, but hindered by a plot not strong enough to support it.
That being said, the story's ending is extremely predictable. I wouldn't mind this if the journey there was done in an interesting way, but it just seems to be the usual "AI is bad and humans who use it are sheep" moral that a lot of sci-fi boils down to. On top of that, the characters aren't done uniquely; the main character is just the typical dummy who buys into the machines, while Lacy is the profound individual who stands up against them. One is right and the other wrong, with no in-between. Wouldn't it be far more interesting if the main character was actually right about some parts and Lacy somewhat short-sighted? For instance, she goes on about how replacing doctors has caused unintentional psychological effects. Fair enough, but Weber could point out that if a robotic brain is as fast as they are in this world, them being surgeons is actually far better. The human error that could accidentally nick an artery or become unsteady would be eliminated, and deaths in surgery would go down dramatically. Through this, Lacy would have a deeper shade of character, making her individuality against the machines more tainted by anger and jealousy than simply just 'being right'. But this isn't the case, so the story largely suffers because of the black and white shades it tries to paint in a world that doesn't really fit that perspective.
A good setting, but hindered by a plot not strong enough to support it.
There was a line here that represented the point where the story lost me:
Here's the thing: That was dialogue, not narration. The latter could be swallow-able, but as the former, it becomes a bit too "As you know, Bob." This is then hammered home with more and more Bob-isms throughout. Sadly, that blunts the overall point and scenario, which made earnest efforts to assert their interesting-ness, but which were left to drown in a sea of Bob.
With that said, I am absolutely not bottom-slating this. There's enough good in here to see what the story was probably trying to be. I think some drastic cutting of the central conversation would let that shine through.
It was only when AI started to be able to perform the psychological reassurance process just as well as a human could, that doctors started to lose their jobs.”
Here's the thing: That was dialogue, not narration. The latter could be swallow-able, but as the former, it becomes a bit too "As you know, Bob." This is then hammered home with more and more Bob-isms throughout. Sadly, that blunts the overall point and scenario, which made earnest efforts to assert their interesting-ness, but which were left to drown in a sea of Bob.
With that said, I am absolutely not bottom-slating this. There's enough good in here to see what the story was probably trying to be. I think some drastic cutting of the central conversation would let that shine through.