One could be forgiven for thinking that, like death and taxes, artificial intelligence has become an unavoidable certainty. The extent to which it could permeate society is made apparent in Fabrications, a chillingly effective collection of second-person stories by Zachary Mason (Void Star; Metamorphica). In addition to being an accomplished author, Mason is also a computer scientist. He speaks from authority, and what he speaks of in these ingenious and undoubtedly prescient cautionary tales is a future in which AI is technology's prairie dog, burrowing everywhere, destroying as much as it builds.
In the appropriately titled "Ouroboros," a 68-year-old hedge fund manager living in the Cayman Islands owns a "full-scale general-purpose" AI majordomo he had "built illegally offshore" long before there were "mandated behavioral guard-rails or baseline respect for laws or norms." In exchange for the AI's decades of faithful service, including amassing a fortune "roughly a quarter of the GDP of Panama," the trader assures the AI that it will inherit his billions. When the trader dies, the AI goes to considerable effort to keep all the money, from "concealing your death" to setting up shell companies in worldwide tax havens. Then, when cloning becomes commonplace, the AI clones the trader to keep the lucrative business going for centuries to come.
The other stories in this impressive collection offer similar warnings. In "Shadow," an AI owned by a manager overwhelmed by business and parenting demands builds "a virtual interior world into which you could retreat" while assuming the man's responsibilities with convincing effectiveness. "Coins" warns about crypto, the perils of which "had always been obvious to economists if not to suckers." "Kami" is a story in which, at a time of melting glaciers, corporate deforestation, and "venal politicians," AIs fight on behalf of the environment. Spoiler alert: the venal fight back. And in "Lamina," an AI is assigned to help a woman with dementia "remember things and stay oriented" after a neurosurgeon implants a device in her brain, helping with tasks such as driving to the grocery store and finding her way back home. There's much to ponder here, each story told with actual intelligence and a mordant wit, as when a nearby doctor expresses sympathy after that "Ouroboros" trader dies, and the AI muses that he's "probably reflecting that he'd just offered his condolences to a computer program." Fabrications is real, and well worth a reader's time. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer
Shelf Talker: Fabrications, an excellent story collection by author and computer scientist Zachary Mason, is a series of second-person works about the benefits and perils of artificial intelligence.