Eunice, Is That You?
Yesterday I finished reading Agency (A Novel) by William Gibson.
Agency is Gibson’s most-recent work of speculative fiction, which takes place simultaneously in the present, the near future, and a far future more than 100 years out.
Simultaneously.
That said, the book's mixed space-time is relatively orderly, and you can keep track of WHEN you are based on WHERE you are. If events are unfolding in San Francisco, then you are in the present. If in London, then you are in the far-future.
But since this is a William Gibson novel, there is contact between the different slices of time, made possible via telepresence technology.
And also, one of the main characters is not a person. She is a general AI named Eunice.
Eunice appears as a force for good, preventing some terrible things from happening to people who don’t deserve them.
But it didn’t need to happen that way, given that Eunice is a by-product of the military industrial complex, stolen by profit-seeking entrepreneurs, and a full-on nuclear war is about to start.
Eunice's saving grace is that general AIs need to be trained by humans. And in her case, she has good trainers. One in particular, an “app whisperer” named Verity Jane. And she has strong allies.
I won’t give away more of the plot, but here are a few themes that got me thinking about possible futures that are visible today:
When technological determinism is in motion, no single person is in charge. Technicians contribute, but the technology goes where it wants to go. By the time Eunice's makers try to take her offline, she has already gained the ability to de-compile and re-compile herself on her own. “My ass is legion” she says before going dark the first time. It reminded me of the foundational importance of ethical design points, like privacy by design, in technology development.
Another is the moral question about cooperation between people and artificial intelligence. Who is responsible for the outcome? What if a bunch of people working for Mechanical Turk do something that an AI instructs and pays them to do? Are they responsible? What happens when a human and an AI co-pilot a drone that does something unexpected? The science fiction context in Agency makes it entertaining, but these types of questions are, to some degree, being answered right now by human-assisted self-driving cars on a highway near you.
Another is the idea that avoiding war is essential to the future of our species. That is pretty obvious, but war isn’t our only threat. Averting pandemics. Slowing climate change. Dialing down extremist politics. These threats deserve our attention too. In the book, the far-future is post-apocalyptic, but the apocalypse (“the Jackpot”) is multipart, preventable at every stage, and takes decades to complete. Peace is only one of the conditions.
But let’s not end it there.
The book ends on an upnote, with humanity coming together across time to make course corrections through acts of friendship, forgiveness, love, loyalty, kindness.
And … even better … in the far future, technology has been applied to some good ends.
Heated outdoor clothing so you can dial-up your jacket if its cold outside. Reusable grocery store bags that origami-themselves up after use and fly themselves back to the store. Luminous immersive ambient art on a massive scale. Wearable minidrones that help us get things done.
読んで ください！
If you choose to buy a copy, please use my Amazon affiliate store here - https://amzn.to/2PKxHcp
ENDNOTE 1: Eunice = UNISS = Untethered Noetic Independent Support System. Eunice doesn’t have a last name. But as she notes, neither do Alexa or Siri.
ENDNOTE 2: Thanks for the recommendation J1!
