The Fall of the Human Empire: Memoirs of a Robot
The little-known history of artificial intelligence--told by a robot named Lucie. Two trends are coming together: exponential growth in the processing power of supercomputers, and new software which can copy the way neurons in the human brain work and give machines the ability to learn. Smart systems will soon be commonplace in homes, businesses, factories, administrations, hospitals and the armed forces. How autonomous will they be? How free to make decisions? What place will human beings still have in a world controlled by robots? After the atom bomb, is artificial intelligence the second lethal weapon capable of destroying mankind, its inventor? The Fall of the Human Empire traces the little-known history of artificial intelligence from the standpoint of a robot called Lucie. She--or it?--recounts her adventures and reveals the mysteries of her long journey with humans, and provides a thought-provoking storyline of what developments in A.I. may mean for both humans and robots.
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For all that this ‘novella' is 65% historical recounting of AI development, 30% hypothesizing on the specific business, economic and social effects of widespread AI application and Singularity achievement, and only 5% fictional framework with a dash of ‘what if', it ends up as a surprisingly impassioned, detailed call for caution in the development and application of artificial intelligence.
Think of it as the long, dry (only 114 pages, but still felt long) version of Dr. Malcom in Jurassic Park “your scientists were so caught up with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should”.
I want to believe in the solar punk version of the future, a harmonization with lightly applied AI, but as heedless as modern society is with innovation and profit at the expense of the environment, it's worth considering if humanity is currently responsible enough to handle experimenting in this field. Still holding out for happy robots in my life time. 😊
All that being said, I wouldn't really recommend anybody pick this up - the author has a definite lean towards ‘how will this effect business', and only in the last few pages does he entertain the notion that people would have interests outside a computer-assisted world.
Pages could also have used a proof-reader whose first language is English (so MANY instances of ‘take decisions ‘ not ‘make decisions' 😣), and a sensitivity reader (‘victim of autism'; Christopher Columbus on ‘voyage of discovery', example of an imaginative risk taker unlike machines; indigenous portrayed as killing white men until they realized there were too many and resigned to their fate is chosen metaphor for people getting used to increased robot presence 😬). Just, yikes.
