📚 Finished reading Artificial Wisdom by Thomas R. Weaver.
One of those books that marries together the feeling of what would have seemed like out-there sci fi a few years ago with the feeling of, well, actually, give it a few years and it’ll be all too real.
It’s 2050 (which is actually surprisingly unfar away). The climate catastrophe continued as you might imagine given today’s (lack of) actions. After a heatwave leaves millions dead, humanity finally realises they need to do something about it if they are not to utterly destroy ourselves and the other lifeforms that share our planet.
Step 1: elect a global “protector”. This person will have authority beyond that of any national government. They’re temporarily to be installed as a kind of dictator, to make the hard decisions they must for humanity to figure out a solution, to force through changes that would be impossible for any mere president of a single country seeking re-election could ever do. After it’s solved they will of course stand down and we’ll all return to normal, sans the climate apocalypse.
The final two candidates are in. Humanity has nominated one rather dubious populist-seeming ex-president of the US. And an Artificial Intelligence.
Watch as humanity wrangles with what the book blurb expresses as the tension between salvation and freedom. Gasp as it becomes very clear that, shockingly, given politics are involved, not everything is on the up-and-up in this contest. Get enmeshed in what turns out to be a kind of murder mystery. And then try not to imagine that, sure, actually, maybe there is half an argument for humanity ChatGPTing itself out of the climate apocalypse vs certain alternatives - although that might be rather a hard pill to swallow when AI and data centres are seemingly an increasing cause of that particular danger. Whichever way you lean, all too many of the references in the book are perfectly visible in today’s world.
My only criticism really is that parts of the end are, I assume deliberately, kind of vague - or perhaps I am just not clever enough to get it all. I hope and trust its a set up for a sequel. Still worth reading even if it isn’t though.
