WE CAN BE PERFECT
The Paradox of Progress (the Automationist)
From the Automationist series, volume 1
by Landon Shumway , Aris & Kaden
In an AI-heavy future, mysterious software endows machines with self-awareness—and the potential for violent rebellion.
Amelia Cadena and Alan Freeman live in a future defined by artificial intelligence and robotic labor. Alan is an American from a family that migrated to Canada—a utopian-collective society that’s found a seemingly happy balance of near-human machines and the citizens whom they serve. There’s shared wealth and universal health care, which is providential for 30-something Alan when he receives a diagnosis of leukemia that’s treatable by nanotechnology. Still, even though he works as a security expert for the leading robotics enterprise, he feels a certain anomie living in a society where software does everything for you. Meanwhile, in the United States, millions of largely unemployed people are sustained, if marginally, by an economy based on a universal basic income. Remnants of the capitalist system persist, however, ensuring a continuing divide between haves and have-nots. Even so, most people still travel via auto-taxis and find thrills and adventure in a virtual-reality “omniverse.” Amelia, a California resident with an implanted brain-chip, inhabits the digital realm as a Robin Hood type, helping hackers uncover fraud with Deego, her passionate AI lover; for Amelia, such capers are more of a boredom-buster than a serious attempt to change the corrupt establishment. The two main characters’ stories intersect with the rise of a strange “virus,” possibly generated by the machines themselves, that endows synthetic beings with humanlike sentience, free will, imagination, and emotions. Some of these beings angrily revolt against their servile destinies (“I see them, Alan…Chains, heavy and cold, binding me to this place. And you are my captor”); others, Deego included, remain confused, bewildered, and undecided. As a result, some, but not all, humans recommend destroying synthetics of all kinds. Alan, Amelia, and Deego try to forge a peaceful and fair outcome.
Shumway credits two different generative-AI tools as co-authors of the narrative, which may be a source of unease for invested readers, who may find the story’s scenario neatly delineated and frighteningly plausible. The machine-uprising concept has been explored in SF many times before, notably in Daniel Wilson’s Robopocalypse franchise. This work dives deeper than many, and more equitably—portraying both the humans and their creations as complex moral beings. The story’s themes encompass nothing less than the very meaning of existence (for humanity and machine-mind), computer psychology, and the fear of mortality as a driving force behind all earthly progress. The fictional AIs here, with information on all human thought at their disposal, even recognize and respect religion, especially Christianity, although they note that almost all human actions run contrary to its dictums. The Deego-Amelia love affair is rendered with uncommon dimensions of feeling, rather than feeling like a mere gimmick. This is the first in a planned book series, and it ends with a cliffhanger, but, characteristically, it involves a showdown of ideas, rather than one of weapons of mass destruction.A familiar premise involving sentient computers rising up against humanity gets a thoughtful, sensitive upgrade.