Introspective AI

I like to read Science Fiction in the summer, I actually like it any time, but for some reason I always classify SciFi as a summer genre.  In that vein I had saved Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie to read by the pool.  I picked it up because a whole ton of people who have similar taste in books as me gave it rave reviews.  I found it to be...very thought provoking and introspective, but first as always SPOILERS AHEAD!

I will do my best to give you the gist of the story, as it is laid out in a two separate story format.  In essence the story focus's around a piece of AI named Breq, except that it isn't about Breq per se.  It is about a being called The Justice of Toren which is a giant ship that is controlled completely by an AI who is able to...I don't know how to explain it...maybe fragment is the word, yeah I'll use that, who is able to fragment it's consciousness and use human bodies as ancillaries.  This means it take a human and submerge it's being into itself and essentially control, get input and be in many different physical places at once.  The AI organizes itself in a complex system that I am not going to go into, but it gets the point across.  In the flashback story The Justice of Toren and more specifically an ancillary designated as One Esk get caught up in a galaxy wide conflict with the head of the Radch, which is the giant empire that pretty much has taken over everything.  The head of the Radch is a being known as Anaander Mianaai, who has also fragmented itself and is now having some sort of internal conflict with itself, resulting in the destruction of The Justice of Toren all except a single ancillary which escaped.  This ancillary, that used to be designated as Esk One, now calls itself Breq and is looking for revenge for the death of her ship, and more importantly one Lt. Awen, with whom Breq as One Esk had bonded (are you completly confused yet?).  Along the way Breq meets up with a former officer, that it did not particularly like, but for some reason saves and brings along the adventure.  The whole story culminates in Breq hooking up with one aspect of Anaander Mianaai, who tells us that the entity it is part of is conflicted and one part is trying to bring about change, and another part is trying to preserve the status quo.  Breq picks a side (kind of) an chaos ensues and things happen and thoughts are thunk and Breq obtains a ship to sail off into the next story.

If the that did not make any sense I don't blame you, this book is full of intricacies and logic leaps that have to be read and thought over to be of any value, and a summation is not the place to do it.  There are several things that caught my attention in this book and I will go through them one by one and maybe my feelings, or the gist of the book, or whatever will become clear...or maybe not.  One of the first things that jumps out is the language choice the author made.  In her world the Radch do not use gender identification, so the only pronoun that is used is she.  While this is a very interesting choice, it gets a bit confusing, especially when it is still used even after a character is identified as male.  The other language choice the author made was to make it clear there were other languages that are used extensively, but they are never differentiated int the book, so it got really confusing sometimes.  The combination of these two choices made the conversations a bit hard to follow some times.  The biggest concept in this book was the AI and it's vastness.  The idea of this huge AI that could and did control everything in it's domain, and it's casual acceptance by the masses

was very well done.  The use of the human ancillaries was very very thought provoking, making me think of the various aspects of personality over and over.  I had a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that a being could essentially fragment itself and control the various aspects of itself completely independently, yet still always part of the whole, but that is not the authors fault, it is just a really complex and huge concept that I think is meant to be mulled over.  The other piece of the AI concept was the idea that it might be possible for a schism to happen within the myriads of facets of such a huge AI's consciousnesses, effectively putting it at odds with itself.  This is shown mostly in the facets of Anaander Mianaai and it's ability to hide what it was doing from itself.  Moving on, the Radch have a very inclusive religion that allows for conquered worlds to add their own deities to the pantheon of an almost Buddhist like structure, the concept of balance being the biggest tenet.  The religion is very intertwined in the day to day activities, customs, and even running of the government.  It is mentioned many times, and the local temples tend to be used as settings on many worlds that are visited during the course of this book.  There is also some sort of super strong alien presence that accounts for a treaty that is part of the schism in the governmental entity, but unfortunately this is not very well explained and for me adds to some of the confusion I had reading this book.  The flashback stories, the bits of history, and the current story are all well told, though I liked the flashback and history part the best.  As you can probably tell from the stunted, stuttering, stilted (yes I am in an alliteration mood today) review that this is not the most reviewable of books.  Overall I felt it was a book of idea's and concepts.  The characters were fairly interchangeable and the stories while good, seemed to be more of a backdrop or context of an idea the author was trying to get across.  I had a hard time following the nuances of the plot and conversations, and to be quit honest I'm still not sure if I actually understand the plot, but I loved the ideas this book posed.  I liked that it was fodder for many hours of thinking, of pondering, of hypothesizing, sometimes I really enjoy that kind of thing.  Overall I found it to be more of a philosophical idea novel then I did a scifi space tale.  I found it a bit confusing and wanted more information on certain things, but enjoyed being able to mull it over when I put it down.  I will give it 7 out of 10 ancillaries and will probably pick up the sequel when it comes out.

What did you think of this book?  Do you like more abstract concepts, or do prefer a more solid story?  How rambly and incoherent is this rambling?

Different

Hello All, sorry about the crazy timing of my posts, but work is happening at all hours...so I guess is this blog :-)  Just finished The Different Girl by Gordon Dahlquist.  I had heard a ton of good things about it from various sources and the cover was yellow...and we all know my weird obsession with yellow covers.  It is not a long book, I read it over the course of two days, but could have easily knocked it out in couple of hours, but it is packed pretty full.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Veronika is one of four girls who live on a remote island.  The four girls are identical except for the color of their hair.  Veronika has red hair, Isobel has lemon yellow hair, Caroline has brown hair and Eleanor has black hair.  The story is told in Veronika's voice and lends an innocent air to the whole book.  We watch as the four girls have lessons, take naps and live a very simple basic life.  The girls are told that their parents died in a plane crash and that they were taken to the island to live.  Right off the bat you can tell that there is something different about these girls.  The girls are all told to take a walk and observe various things around the island for a specific amount of time and then report back.  They at first find it difficult to separate and make their own decisions on where to go, but it gets easier over time.  Veronika eventually even goes so far as to make a decision to stay past her allotted time to continue to study something.  The girls are constantly questioned and taught to think about things, but seem to be very well cared for by the only other people on the island.  Irene and Robbert.  The lives on the island are interrupted by the arrival of May, the different girl.  When she first see's Veronika and her sisters she screams, letting us know that they are even more different then originally thought.  May's arrival changes everything and the girls, especially Veronika and Caroline start to display curiosity and start making their own decisions about May.  Eventually we find out that May was on a boat with her Uncle and his friend, and that the boat they live in was attacked.  This caused the boat to blow up and May to wash up on the island.  Their is a constant curiosity on the girls part and a constant fear/frustration/curiosity on May's part as Robbert and Irene try and figure out what to do with her.  Irene and Robbert try and continue the girls lessons, adding in more questions and trying to get them to think.

 Eventually Robbert tells the girls that they were built by 8 mothers and 8 fathers who were on the plane that crashed, but the plane did not crash, it was blown up on purpose and the plane with the girls, Irene and Robbert escaped.  Apparently in the future (I'm assuming this is future Earth although it is never clearly stated) it seems that people are afraid of the AI/robot/cyborgs (again never fully explained) that the girls are.  It seems from the vague tidbits we get that there are schools that all children go to that tends to brain wash them into a certain style of thinking.  Eventually another boat comes to the island, scaring May into taking the four girls into hiding, while Irene and Robbert greet the boat.  Caroline decides she need to go get Robberts notebook and leaves the other girls.  While they are hiding the people on the boat apparently shoot Irene and Robbert, destroy the little compound they had been living in and leave.  Caroline shows up with the notebook, but is broken and falls to her "death" on the cliffs below.  The remaining three girls and May use the notebook to rebuild the little compound and are living there still.
This book is different, it is less of a story and more of an idea.  The point of this book is not to explain what is going on in the outside world, though we get a few hints of a possible dystopia, the point is more about the girls and how they think.  If I had to pick a point to this book...I'm not sure what it would be, and yet it is fascinating all the same.  The decision to use one of the four AI girls as the voice of this book was spot on.  It gave an uninformed, yet present voice to all the happenings.  Everything we know is from an almost emotionless, yet innocent perspective and it makes you think differently about things...which may be the point.  The patience and obvious care that Irene and Robbert have for the girls, obviously goes beyond just programming a machine, a certain parent child bond seems to be apparent in their actions.  The

disconnectedness, yet bond the four girls share is an odd one, but it makes a weird sort of sense.  I think my favorite part about May was her frustration in the four girls.  They knew they were constructs, yet they thought of themselves as alive and sentient.  May on the other hand at times had a hard time getting past their differentness, sometimes letting the idea that they were machines get in the way of getting to know them.  In the end though May bonded with them and called them friends.  This book is a really different (there is that word again) mix of man and machine, thinking and feeling, logic and intuition.  It is really hard to talk about, because it is really hard to explain.  Go read it and tell me what you think.  I give it 7 out of 10 AI's
At what point does a machine become human?  At what point does a human become a machine?  Is this a really heavy book for YA or am I just older then I thought?

Is It A Story Or A College Essay?

Just finished a quick read Genesis by Bernard Beckett.  I am not going to follow my usual synopsis pattern because this is not really a book you sum up, so without further ado I am just going to dive right in and then we can discuss what it means after that.  SPOILERS AHEAD WARNING BIG SPOILERS AHEAD

Essentially the book is told in the form of an oral examination of Anaximander, a student trying to gain entrance into the esteemed Academy, which pretty much controls her whole society.  We learn that Anax as she is called, lives in a fairly ideal society.  Everybody is safe, has plenty to live on, learning is encouraged and gender does not seem to be an issue.  Near the end of their learning term, young ones are encouraged to study intensively a topic of their own choosing, and Anax chooses to study Adam Forde.  Adam Forde was a young man who played a pivotal role in the history of Anax's society, being responsible for bringing about the Final Dilemma which apparently was the catalyst for the current ideal state in which Anax is living. Anax is approached by a man by the name of Pericles who agrees to be her tutor.  The book is broken up into each of the four hours of the exam with a break section in between each one.  This is where we get our story.  Anax tells the Examiners...and us about the history of her world, starting with the 2030's.  The world as it is wont to do devolves into chaos, wars are raging, resources are becoming scarce and devastating plagues
were released.  Among all this a man with a vision, and a fortune established what became known as the Republic.  The colony was based on an island described as "near the bottom of the world".  A huge sea wall was erected around the island, seeded with mines and anti-aircraft weaponry.  Absolutely no outsiders were allowed anywhere near the isolated Republic.  Within the society, Plato (that of course was the name of super rich dude) was able to put his own personal philosophies into place.  People were divided by genome into four classes, the lowly Labor class, the protector Soldier class, the able Technician class, and the ruling elite Philosophers class.  People were also divided by gender, living only among their own sex in communes.  They were encouraged to marry and have children, but always returned to the communes, only able to spend time with their spouse through earned "share-time" credits.  Children were taken away as soon as they were born and tested on their first birthdays to see what class they would be placed into, or if found unsuitable they would be terminated.  The thinking was, if everybody was loyal only to the state instead of to each other through those pesky family bonds, they could avoid the same chaos that brought about the need to isolate themselves in the first place.  This worked out well for the first generation, but as the subsequent generations grew up, the fear that kept there grandparents and to some degree their parents in line was no longer as big a factor.  Among these was
Adam, a boy whose genetic markers hinted that while brilliant, he may have a tendency towards behaving erratically.  As a result of all this Adam ends up killing a comrade to rescue a refugee, stating that he acted on his instincts and humanness.  The higher ups sensing a rebellion brewing tried to make an example out of Adam, telling the people he endangered the whole society on a whim, trying to instill fear back in the people.  This only had very limited success and instead of executing him as was the norm, they had to find an alternate means of punishment.  They decided to use him to "teach" an prototype android named Art.  Art's creator had given him the face of an orangutan and an electronic brain capable of learning. We learn that this all has to be done in secret as an earlier prototype went "crazy" and killed seven children, as a result Art has a directive in his protocols to never harm a self-conscious being. We spend a lot of time with Adam trying to convince Art that as a human he is superior, his ability to "feel" and act on that is something Art will never have.  Art in the meantime is trying to convince Adam that not only is he superior to humans, but that the Idea is superior to both humans and AI's.  Anax's recital stops here.  After that there is only speculation on what happened between then and the Final Dilemma.  The Examiners have noted throughout the presentation that Anax has taken liberties, and filled in some emotions with speculation. Anax agrees, but state that from all of the extensive research she has done, she feels confident that her analysis is correct.  The Examiners that tell her that they have the missing footage of what happened between the end of the recorded transcripts and the Final Dilemma.  Anax is both excited and scared to see what will be revealed.  We are then shown a hologram of what happens next.  Adam and Art have come to an uneasy truce.  To this end they have agreed to help each other escape.  Adam is not 100% sure of Art, or his reasons for helping him, but he has to take whatever help he can get.  The two orchestrate a violent escape and end up in the computer mainframe.  Once there Art uploads his program and disseminates it to every computer driven thing in the society, including a plant that will build more
androids like himself.  Adam realizes that he was set up and the guards are coming to kill him.  He asks Art why he betrayed him and Art tells him that as Adam had vigorously argued before, Art is not human, he does not think like a human and to that end just used Adam to get where he needed to be.  Art wanted the chance to upload himself and spread his programming all over the Republic and that his body being destroyed would not mean anything once he was in the system.  Adam realizes that it is all over for him and begs Art to kill him instead of letting him get shot by the guards.  After a brief hesitation Art reaches over and kills Adam.  Anax is horrified as Art's programming was supposed to never allow for him to harm a human.  This is where it is revealed that Anax, her Examiners and the whole Republic are all androids.  Apparently after Art downloaded himself and enough replicas were made, the androids decided the only way to protect civilization was to eliminate the human factor.  They considered themselves the next step in the evolution.  After the Great War, the androids who decided to fashion themselves to look like orangutans (in a nod to  Planet of the Apes).  The Academy was formed to carefully balance the individual vs a stable society.  This has worked for the most part, with only one real obstacle, the Idea.  The thinking is along with the interaction between Adam and Art, Ideas that Adam possessed "infected" Art, making him capable of overriding his programming and killing another sentient being.  The only androids who know about this are the Academy.  The thinking is as long as the others do not know that they are capable of this kind of thing, it will never be a problem, the only glitch in this is that every once in a while a "mutation" happens which makes an android more human than normal.  These "mutations" always show an unusual interest in Adam Forde, and tend to have the capacity to behave in an irrational manner.  These "mutations" are sought out under the pretense of an entrance exam to the prestigious Academy and are then terminated. In case you haven't guessed it, our Anaximander is one such deviant, even though she did not know it and is promptly terminated. The End.

I'm not really sure how I feel about this book.  It was full of some great questions, what does it mean to be human, when does the good of the whole outweigh the needs of the one, individuality vs stability, are androids really better humans than humans are?  I kind of like that the book never really gives any concrete answers to the tougher questions.  By the end we are left wondering if indeed to be "human" actually means what we thought it did.  I would say the vast majority of the book is devoted to questions and discussion of these questions.  The way it is written, in an oral examination form makes it read almost like an essay for a philosophy class.  This is good and bad.  The book was short enough that it didn't bog down to much, but the style did not lend itself to anything other than cold, quick facts and then of course the philosophy.  I also never quit got if the androids just took over the isolated island, or if they took over the whole world.  I also found it interesting that after all the talk of balance and allowing individualists as part of a healthy society, that the androids still felt it necessary to take a lot of free will out of the picture, choosing, as the super rigid society before them to eliminate a possible threat instead of seeing what would actually happen.  Over all I would recommend it for anybody who likes to have those endless conversations/arguments over a nice glass of red wine, you know the ones where there are no real answers but the conversation is such fun.  It might be a good book for the older teenage/college set to start off various discussions.  Over all I give it 6 out of 10 Orangutans.
What do you think of books based on philosophy?  Do you think there are definite answers to every question?  What does it mean to be human/sentient?  Do I count as human before I've had my coffee?