快猫短视频

Ariel S. Winter

Simon & Schuster

WHEN AI that is truly sentient finally emerges, the big question is how humans will fare. Will machines try to hunt us to extinction, as in the Terminator films, or will their omnipotence mean life for humans can be the kind of extended party of Iain M. Banks鈥檚 Culture series?

In Ariel S. Winter鈥檚 The Preserve, the robots have reached a stage somewhere in the middle. The book is set in the not-too-distant future, when human populations have dwindled after a series of unspecified pandemics and robots greatly outnumber us.

Although superior in some ways, machine intelligence hasn鈥檛 yet reached the god-like levels sometimes envisioned. In fact, robot society鈥檚 struggles and frustrations look very like those of humans today. Some robots are helpful, some murderous and some download illegal virtual reality experiences in a manner analogous to human drug addiction. If we create AIs in our own image, perhaps they will share some of our frailties?

In this future, the remaining people have been left bewildered and embittered by their change of fortune, leading to occasional outbreaks of human-robot violence. 鈥淓volution鈥檚 supposed to be survival of the fittest. We鈥檙e no longer the fittest,鈥� says police chief Jesse Laughton, the book鈥檚 main protagonist.

鈥淚n this world, our best hope lies in machines that view humans the way we see children or endangered wildlife鈥�

To help keep humans safe, most start living in enclosed territories where robots aren鈥檛 supposed to enter 鈥� the preserves of the title. Laughton is a lawman in one such recently established area.

But even in these places, humanity is struggling with an existential crisis. Most people live off robot government subsidies and alcoholism is rife. Fertility clinics are needed, not just to provide IVF, as now, but to persuade people to have children at all. 鈥淎 baby in every belly鈥� is the slogan. Couples with one child are encouraged to have a second with outside partners in order to boost genetic diversity.

The Preserve is ostensibly a detective story: the first murder to take place in the human zone falls to Laughton to solve, and he has to show the robots that people can police themselves. There are shades of US author Isaac Asimov鈥檚 robot detective fiction, a loosely linked series of short stories and novels that were part of his hugely influential writings on machine minds in the mid-to-late 20th century.

But, as in Asimov鈥檚 work, The Preserve is more than a whodunnit. The touching relationship between Laughton and his robot cop partner is a way to explore the differences between organic and robot consciousness.

Asimov鈥檚 tales have a fond place in my memory because they sparked my lifelong love of sci-fi, even though, looking back, they seem hopelessly outdated and sexist. Annoyingly, Winter succumbs to cliches of his own: most of the interesting characters are men and Laughton鈥檚 wife plagues him with whiny phone calls at times of danger.

That aside, I enjoyed the thought experiment about how it would feel if a new kind of being could do most things better than you. It becomes clear that, in this world, our best hope of survival lies in those machines that view humans the way we see young children or endangered wildlife.

It is a sobering take-home message, considering how bad we are at preserving wildlife. I hope any future AIs do a better conservation job than us.