Alice McIlroy on Writers exploring AI and the threat of technology: why it is too important to leave public conversations to Tech Giants.

With the ongoing debate about AI influence on human life, now, I would argue, is when we need writers and artists to engage with the conversation around AI – through art – more than ever. It is too important a conversation to leave to those with a vested commercial interest in its advancement.

The role of artists and writers has always been to hold a mirror up to society, hasn’t it? To ask difficult questions and open debate, to navigate what it means to be human, to help us see our shared humanity, perhaps even probe issues around responsibility and morality. I believe human creative endeavour enables progress – progress in our humanity, something unchecked technological advancement threatens to endanger.

 Here are three thought-provoking 2023 books exploring moral dilemmas around AI and the threat of technology that are not to be missed:

MORE PERFECT by Temi Oh: In this futuristic novel and epic love story set in a technological age, the protagonist Moremi’s sister believes “technology will only entrench inequality deeper in our society,” unless we address issues of race and gender first. Moremi and her two sisters all respond differently to the adoption of the Pulse (an implant connecting the brain to the Panopticon network). Moremi initially embraces her Pulse, but it ultimately exacerbates her sense of isolation.

THE LIST by Yomi Adegoke: It is a nuanced exploration of online toxicity and the central character Ola's moral dilemma. Ola, who has made her name breaking #MeToo stories, wakes to discover her fiancé has been named online in a list of abusive men. The novel reflects on the difference between our online and offline personas, and the perils of being unable to distinguish real life from our digital selves.  

IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE by Jo Callaghan: In her debut, Callaghan seamlessly blends a police procedural novel with elements of speculative fiction. DCS Kat Frank is sceptical when she is chosen to lead a pilot programme that has her paired with AIDE Lock on a missing persons case (AIDE being an Artificially Intelligent Detective Entity). The book asks the question whether, when the case becomes personal, the combination of Kat’s human instinct and the logic of Lock’s algorithms can prove to be a successful partnership.

All three novels ask pressing questions about the threat of technology. Adegoke’s encourages us to conceptualise a more nuanced manner of engagement in an often polarising digital world, while Oh’s perhaps warns about a technology which purports to connect people, but, in fact, compounds isolation, separation and historic inequality. Both Adegoke and Callaghan’s debuts explore contentious dilemmas in modern society (online toxicity in the former, and AI taking human jobs in the latter) with the distance of fiction enabling greater capacity for debate. Whereas the moral dilemma that Callaghan explores is AI taking over human jobs, my debut The Glass Woman considers AI taking over the human mind, and its impact on perception and identity.

In The Glass Woman, the protagonist Iris, a female neuroscientist, trials a pioneering AI brain implant and must fight to reconstruct her identity. It explores the nature of humanity amid technological advancement and uncertainty. It is a quest for Iris to discover who she is before it is too late. A cautionary tale, it posits AI as a manifestation of human desire for transcending our own limitations, and the peril that invokes. The novel asks: what will be lost if we allow technological progress at all costs?

At a time when the debate around AI has become so polarised, it is perhaps more vital than ever that writers and artists continue to engage with it through stories. The importance of storytellers using age-old methods to conceive possible worlds and outcomes, opening up the debate to everyone – not just the masters of technology – is now more pressing than ever.

What makes human writers unique is our identity – and what we want as readers is, arguably, authenticity – but AI creates an algorithmic echo chamber. What will be lost if we allow AI, and the bias inherent in machine learning, to replace human creativity? Perhaps what is at stake if we don’t engage in these conversations now is our identity – not just as individuals – but as a society, and it is our shared collective humanity which will ultimately suffer as a consequence.

The Glass Woman by Alice McIlroy

Black Mirror meets Before I Go to Sleep by way of Severance.

If you could delete all the hurt and pain from your life... would you? Even if you weren't sure what would be left?

Pioneering scientist Iris Henderson awakes in a hospital bed with no memories. She is told that she is the first test-subject for an experimental therapy, placing a piece of AI technology into her brain. She is also told that she volunteered for it. But without her memories, Iris doesn't know what the therapy is or why she would ever choose it.

Everyone warns her to leave it alone, but Iris doesn't know who to trust. As she scratches beneath the surface of her seemingly happy marriage and successful career, a catastrophic chain of events is set in motion, and secrets will be revealed that have the capacity to destroy her whole life.

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Alice McIlroy’s writing has been longlisted for the Stylist Prize for Feminist Fiction and Grindstone International Novel Prize. Her debut novel, The Glass Woman, was published on 2nd January 2024 by Datura/Angry Robot Books. It can be ordered here.

She can be found on Twitter @alice_mcilroy and Instagram @alicemcilroy_author.