I am Not a Robot by Joanna Stern

I AM NOT A ROBOT by Joanna Stern (former technology writer for The Wall Street Journal) is subtitled “My Year Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything” and looks at a variety of areas (e.g., health, travel, communications) while using real world examples to showcase some potential benefits and downsides of AI. For example, Stern spent time with a very experienced radiologist and AI looking at mammogram and ultrasound images. It was fascinating to hear the health professional praise AI. In contrast, when she went to the dentist, AI was used as a crutch to justify recommending unnecessary and expensive procedures. Bill Gates told her, “The foundation of AI advances for healthcare are both in the discovery side and in the delivery side,” referring to being able to speed up innovation and to offer more and better explanations to patients. In fact, Stern interviewed “nearly two hundred people – from everyday users to some of the most powerful voices in this industry,” including  Steve Mann (the “father” of wearable computing), Sal Khan (educational technology leader), and Mustafa Suleyman (Microsoft’s CEO) amongst others. She shares her thoughts in a variety formats, often essentially bullet pointing ideas as when she describes her experiences with a variety of wearables or her problems with relying on AI only to answer texts and emails (that was a very short experiment). Stern explores potential impacts on education through a visit to her alma mater, Union College in Schenectady, New York, finding that teachers and students share concerns about AI’s impact, especially on critical thinking skills. Stern’s writing style is distinctive, and Publishers Weekly acknowledges that, saying, “Stern’s balanced, clear-eyed assessments and crisp, funny prose (‘I was teetering on the edge of the AI-byss’) make this stand out among the growing crowd of books on AI.” Highly recommended.

Below is a 20 minute video interview dealing specifically with writing and researching I AM NOT A ROBOT, but if you are curious about Stern’s twelve years of tech reporting at The Wall Street Journal, check out a wider variety of videos.

The Proving Ground by Michael Connelly

THE PROVING GROUND by Michael Connelly is the latest Lincoln Lawyer novel although main character Mickey Haller is now representing clients in civil court cases instead of criminal ones. This mystery will feel as though it is literally ripped from the headlines as Haller’s client is a grieving Mom (Brenda Randolph) whose only child, a high school junior, was killed by a high school classmate, her former boyfriend. The key question is the extent to which an AI avatar (Clair/Wren) influenced the killer and whether the parent company, Tidalwaiv, is responsible. THE PROVING GROUND was full of suspense and a quick read, bolstered by my ability to readily picture the characters from the TV series. Often willing to take risks and push the envelope, Haller freely muses about his strategy and readers are subtly educated (or reminded) about related scholarship like Asimov’s three laws of robotics or Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Nearer. Connelly acknowledges the case Megan Garcia v. Character Technologies in his final notes and readers do not have to look far for other similar examples, such as this recent Wall Street Journal article on a suit filed against OpenAI. An excellent, highly relevant story, THE PROVING GROUND received a starred review from Booklist (“one of the best yet”) – and interested readers can join a Book Group discussion with the author on November 18.

Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz

AUTOMATIC NOODLE by Annalee Newitz (Four Lost Cities, The Terraformers) is a thoughtful science fiction work which received starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly (“Newitz packs this tale with simmering action, endearing characters, and political savvy, topping it all off with generous dollops of humor and imagination. It’s delicious.”). Newitz (whose work has won numerous awards including being a Nebula award finalist) meets a high standard with this tale set near San Francisco in the late twenty-first century, post-war between America and California. The main characters are robots named Staybehind, Sweetie, Cayenne, and Hands who each have their own personality and specialty (security; organization; taste; cooking) and they decide to revive a restaurant with the help of a recently homeless human. Robots have some civil rights in the newly independent California and it’s exciting to see them grapple with the start-up issues as well as fake reviews and prejudice against machines. AUTOMATIC NOODLE is the Top Pick for LibraryReads selection for August. At only 176 pages, this is a quick, cozy read and highly recommended, especially for sci-fi fans of books like Becky Chambers’ Monk and Robot or Travis Baldree’s Bookshops & Bonedust or Julie Leong’s The Teller of Small Fortunes.

Monk and Robot by Becky Chambers

MONK AND ROBOT by Becky Chambers is FANTASTIC; she has won the Hugo Award for her Wayfarer series.  I am really pleased to see this new publication which contains both of her earlier works, A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy. This new paperback edition would make a wonderful high school or college graduation present as the characters search for meaning and purpose. As the cover indicates, these stories are about the adventures of, interactions between, and reflections from a Monk named Sibling Dex and a Robot called Splendid Speckled Mosscap. They live in the time after the Factories and after the Transition when robots gained self-awareness and left to explore life on their own and when humans sought to rejuvenate their planet.  It has been roughly two hundred years since any interaction and both Dex and Mosscap have much to learn about each other and themselves. Highly Recommended.

The Heart and the Chip by Rus and Mone

THE HEART AND THE CHIP by Daniela Rus and Gregory Mone is a generally optimistic non-fiction work that is subtitled “Our Bright Future with Robots.” Author credentials are impressive and contribute to making this a relevant, easy to read text: Rus is actively involved in the robotics field as director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Mone has co-authored several other texts with scientists like Susan Cain, Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson. Rus and Mone have divided their new text into three parts: Dreams, Reality, and Responsibility. Focusing on robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning, they are adept at providing useful definitions (“a robot is a machine capable of following and repeating these three steps: (1) Sense (2) Think (3) Act”) and distinctions: “machine learning and artificial intelligence are often confused, as the latter has become a business and marketing buzzword, but you can think of machine learning as pattern recognition systems that work in service of AI, to assist with higher-level decision-making and reasoning.”

It was also very exciting to read about their positive spin on current (e.g., using scans in medical diagnoses with significantly reduced error rates when humans and robots work together) and future applications (e.g., developing exoskeletons to improve the mobility for older people), including numerous suggestions (a wish list, really) for inventions capable of meeting needs like: smarter, more sensitive hands; softer, safer robots; more agile robots (and perhaps ones that are better at anticipating human actions, especially when driving); ways to build robots faster; incorporating better artificial muscles and more powerful batteries, plus better sensors and faster brains; and mechanisms for communicating more naturally with robots. Yet another section outlines eleven attributes for future robotics systems, addressing questions of regulation and ethics at a high level. Rus and Mone acknowledge that there is vast potential for malicious hackers and see the need for cybersecurity as a reason that could “spur tremendous job creation.” Roughly five percent of the text is notes for reference by readers and researchers.

Robots and the People Who Love them by Herold

ROBOTS AND THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE THEM by Eve Herold is a new non-fiction text about “Holding on to Our Humanity in an Age of Social Robots.” Herold, an award-winning science writer and consultant, explores questions like “Could robots make us more emotionally intelligent?” and “Will robots be smarter than humans?” She includes numerous examples, particularly from Japan. In addition, Herold raises concerns about using robots as nannies or warriors, and she asks about possible impacts on human culture, commenting that “it doesn't take a particularly able robot to elicit projection or to bring out the very best and the worst in humanity.” Another informative quote: “The facial expressions showing six basic emotions -- anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise -- are understood more or less universally without a language translator ... and roboticists are programming these expressions into social robots.” Overall, the text seems to consist of many anecdotes and factoids strung together which is fine since concrete examples may effectively spark reflection and discussion, but ROBOTS AND THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE THEM is less action oriented than expected. Chapter summaries could help provide a better overview of the argument Herold may be making. Also, while roughly twenty percent of the text is devoted to notes, the text could benefit from adding a list of relevant resources -- companies in this field, researchers in this field, and organizations that deal with each of the areas (e.g., childcare, military) concerned. This is an important topic which merits informed discussion and thoughtful regulation; as Herold references a study that “highlights what psychologists already recognize: interactive robots are not really about robots -- they're mostly about us and the complicated emotions we bring to the human-robot interaction.”  

Dual Memory by Burke and Witch King by Wells

Wanted to share a few comments about some new science fiction and fantasy offerings from Macmillan’s Tor Publishing Group: 

DUAL MEMORY by Sue Burke revolves around sentient machines or systems and seems very timely given the recently expressed concerns about Artificial Intelligence. This well-written and suspenseful story is set on Thule, a land in the Arctic region where the inhabitants, while anti-war, resist an active opposition to those who attempt to invade. A visitor, Antonio Moro, is wounded in a rocket attack and stays behind to work as an artist. He’s given Par Augustus, a robotic executive assistant, as a gift and the adventures truly begin. Par is to follow three ancient robot laws: “Don’t hurt humans, don’t let myself get hurt, and obey human laws as appropriate.” Readers, however, will question how long that will last as Par gains more and more knowledge. Antonio, too, transforms as he experiments further with his art; they form a formidable team. DUAL MEMORY received a starred review from Booklist (“If Ursula Le Guin had written about AI machines, it would have looked a lot like this marvelous fable”).

WITCH KING by Martha Wells (Network Effect and others in the Murderbot series) is the introduction to a new world featuring the title character, a legendary demon named Kai, and his companion, Zeide, who is a witch searching for her missing wife. Politics and conflict abound. I honestly found this novel a bit difficult to follow – not only are there many characters, the rather lengthy (414 pages) book also jumps around in time between the current action and past events involving the same characters. However, Amal El-Mohtar, reviewing for The New York Times, found this temporal aspect to be a plus, writing, “timelines play off each other wonderfully: Elements introduced in a dizzying rush of world building become welcome context for the flashbacks, which in turn escalate tension in the present” and chose WITCH KING as one of just five science fiction and fantasy titles to suggest as Summer Reads. Wells’ many fans should (and will!) certainly give this book a try. WITCH KING appeared as a LibraryReads selection for May 2023 and Wells is a prolific, outstanding author in this genre – she has won four Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards, and three Locus Awards.