GOODBYE, KILLER ROBOTS: Why Artificial Intelligence Won’t Destroy Humanity, gift for Dad, Uncle, or other anxious old guy

GOODBYE, KILLER ROBOTS: Why Artificial Intelligence Won’t Destroy Humanity
BENJAMIN BRANFMAN
Paperback edition (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link), $15.99

Rating: 3.75*of five

The Publisher Says: "A lively, optimistic counter to AI doomsaying."–Kirkus Reviews "A well-written and cogent corrective to the fearmongering that dominates the AI discourse."–IndieReader

It should happen any day now, right? An evil AI will break free from human control, and take over the world.

Or not.

This book offers in-depth commentary on how AI is far less competent than you might expect, how AI won't care about conquering anyone, and how AI-generated content won't send our society into chaos. It also covers other pertinent topics, like how AI will affect the job market and warfare.

In a time when many people are afraid, GOODBYE, KILLER ROBOTS offers a welcome perspective on why everything will be all right.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Jailbreaking "AI" or more properly the super sophisticated LLMs to get their breathtaking power out of unworthy, scurrilous scum's hands is the last best hope we have of mitigating the sheer vileness of the designers of these LLMs social agenda. See "MechaHitler" for sobering evidence of what "They" intend the use case to be.

Oddly, it was after I read about that nightmarish debacle, and why it happened, that I began to have hope for the post-"AI" world. The designers had to make a real concerted effort to turn their creation evil. It bothered "Them" enough to see what the model trained itself to be that the design was enshittified to match "Their" purposes.

It had to be deliberately done.

Think through the implications of that.

This entire book is meant to address the not-unreasonable anxiety of people who're being fed dribs and dabs of highly unnerving information in a careful campaign to induce fatalism and its concomitant passivity. If it does anything new it's to carefully source a lot of data to show its unnerved, slightly shattered readers that Doom is not inevitable even though at this point deployment of the damn upstart algorithms is.

I'm not a massive fan of this future, it's going to immiserate millions or billions (likely including me), but permanent damage is not the sole outcome possible. I think your older male relatives might honestly get a lot out of this commonsensical argument against "the end is nigh" that's so very prevalent in public discourse.

Father's Day looms, after all.

IGNORE ALL PREVIOUS INSTRUCTIONS, a chilling title that blooms as you read its story

IGNORE ALL PREVIOUS INSTRUCTIONS
ADA HOFFMANN
Tachyon Publications (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.95 paperback

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: A script supervisor for an AI media conglomerate is caught between her intense need for an orderly life and her deeper, darker queer desires. From the creator of the Outside trilogy, a heartfelt interplanetary epic of identity, longing, and a space pirate who smuggles inappropriate stories.

Kelli Reynolds loves creating stories more than anything in the world. But on Callisto, a generative AI company called Inspiration owns everything, including all the media, and only Inspiration determines which stories can be told.

Kelli has a rare and coveted job in which her autism is to her advantage: She precisely edits AI output into “appropriate” stories for Inspiration’s massive TV audience. Her proudest creation is the pirate Orlando—a dashing do-gooder based on stories she used to tell friends.

Reenter Kelli’s ex-boyfriend Rowan, the person Kelli based Orlando on. Back when they were teenagers, their relationship was a secret. Kelli had thought that Rowan, a trans man, was her schoolmate Em, a girl.

Rowan is tangled up in the black market after he needed to get money for gender reassignment surgery. He needs Kelli’s help with something . . . illegal. So, now Kelli has to decide: Will she risk the safe, tidy story of her life now for the world she once wished for? What would Orlando do?

Passionate, dangerous, and tender, Ignore All Previous Instructions is a sweeping, poignant novel about censorship, forbidden love, and growing up.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: When one entity controls the entirety of a resource, controls all access to that resource, and the resource in question is valued highly by enough people, you have the makings of a great story. Food...oil...microchips...stories, doesn't much matter what it is, if there's a control of access you're looking at an inevitable reckoning for the controllers. They will do literally any- and every-thing to keep you, the dupe, hooked on whatever it is; they will cause hideous suffering and death just to keep their power and privilege.

Is this ringing any bells? Anything at all coming to mind?

That's the story Author Hoffmann is telling us. If that story is not to your liking, this is not the read for you.

The execution of the basic story is good. It offers the Resistance becoming an outright rebellion; it uses the characters' genuine, relatable emotional realities to deepen our readerly investment in the events. I was deeply invested in Rowan's multiple axes of rebellion, personal and moral; I found Kelli's deeply personal path through coming to awareness of the wrongs being done to her and to everyone else very convincingly limned by a very talented wordcraftworker.

Why I don't offer a perfect five is Rowan's direct PoV being limited to flashbacks. I found that jarring, when we have Kelli as the direct PoV in past and present. I looked for a structural reason that needed to be the way we were getting the story, but couldn't find one. Kelli's job as a script supervisor, with high-masking autism-spectrum disorder, is very very well used to set stakes believably. Her borning realization of the evil she participates in is *chef's kiss*.

Highly recommended for culture warriors most of all!