A story about a cyborg called Ai who moonlights as an AI writing tool, written by an author was name is also Ai – it takes a moment to wrap your head around this, but Ai Jiang’s intriguing and darkly powerful tale novelette I Am AI is definitely written by a human (not an AI) and is very, very good. In a distant but utterly believable future, the city of Emit is dominated by a single, monopolistic corporation – the creepily titled New Era – with vast numbers of citizens living in poverty. Cyborg Ai works herself into the ground trying to earn enough to pay off her crippling debts and strip away her inefficient human flesh, even while doing what she can to support her neighbours and make their lives a little better. As her battery wanes though, and work pressures mount, her choices come increasingly into question.
Out now from Shortwave Publishing, I Am AI packs a lot into a short space and, in this era of acute and growing concerns regarding artificial intelligence (or at least what we think that term means), proves incredibly relevant. This isn’t a story about AI necessarily, but as Ai wrestles with the difficulties of her technologically driven life it’s impossible not to draw parallels with how things are today, and how things seem to be going. In this bleak, believable world of overbearing corporate power, inequality, and AI-driven cultural and artistic homogeneity, technology is a double-edged sword. Ai’s relentless drive to work, to differentiate herself from bland AI-generated copy, to earn enough to replace yet more of her human parts, all point towards the perils of focusing too much on efficiency and productivity, at the cost of humanity.
There’s much more to this than just ‘AI is bad’, though. Despite the technology, this feels pretty grounded as SF goes, also exploring Ai’s relationship to and responsibilities towards her community, and the human cost of a world in which creativity and individuality are at best commoditised, and at worst actively suppressed. Ai may be a cyborg, but she nevertheless offers a very human, emotional perspective, her constant worries given weight and immediacy by regular reminders of her ever-decreasing power level – it makes for a remarkably tense read as her battery largely hovers in perilous single digits, moments away from death. Beyond the stress, the fear and the overworking though, beyond even the technological warnings, at its heart this is a compact, compelling tale of choices, and hope, and the essential value of the things that make us human. It’s powerful stuff, and well worth going back to time and again.
Review copy provided by the author
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