In this short story, Tchaikovsky explores the somehow already well trodden field of AI, and specifically the ways in which technology replacing people might create (or exacerbate) a crisis of meaning and community. Tim was hired on as an intern at Holring and Baselard’s HR department, and within the year found himself the last remaining member of it. Everyone else have been made redundant by various AI modules. Everyone Tim interacts with, in fact, is an artificial intelligence of some kind, that have all been programmed to be easy for people to interact with.
Tchaikovsky pokes fun at this, too, the idea that we’re creating AI to interact with people, and then replacing people such that computers are interacting with other computers using language models designed to make themselves better understood to humans (rather than, say, efficient). I’ve actually already seen at least one youtube video where the creator claims to have created an AI software to interact with an IT chatbot, and when the two systems realized they were both computers, supposedly chose to revert to code.
There is an intense loneliness in these pages that I don’t think I’ve seen much of in other depictions of a future significantly altered by AI for good or ill. There are always people around, lots of people – whether they are citizens enjoying a utopian world or freedom fighters on the fringe, they’re always there. Here, Tim is the only person we ever see and his increasing desperation to find another PERSON is quietly devastating. For all the horror that’s been written about AI going evil or simply sentient and then neutrally deciding to purge humanity, I haven’t seen anyone explore the horror of AI operating precisely as designed.