Stephen Baker - Tor/Forge Blog

Where will artificial intelligence take us? And what existential questions will the rise of AI pose? These six reads explore the potential for robots and artificial intelligence to save — or destroy — us all… perfect to tie you over until Season 2 of Westworld.

Autonomous by Annalee Newitz

It’s the future (it’s always the future) and drug pirate Jack — known as a pharmaceutical Robin Hood — is giving poor people the medicines they need but can’t afford. All admirable until Jack’s the cause of many lethal overdoses. Eliasz, a military agent, and his robotic partner, Paladin, are tracking her down. While doing so, they form an unusually close bond… sound familiar? Newitz is a master storyteller, and this book is especially powerful because it probes philosophical topics like property, identity, and — of course — autonomy.

Made to Kill by Adam Christopher

Raymond Electromagnet is a detective. He’s also a robot. Programmed to always work to make a profit and with a memory tape limit of only 24 hours, Ray would do just about anything to get some cold hard cash, and he’s sure as hell good at keeping secrets. Hired to find a missing movie star, Ray the robot gets into some serious trouble… making the novel a thrill to read.

Infomocracy by Malka Older

Infomocracy was on tons of 2016 Best Books lists, and Huffington Post called it “one of the greatest literary debuts in recent history.” It deserves the praise! Political parties spar during an election cycle, twenty years after Information — a powerful search engine — ended international wars and introduced global micro-democracy. How often do you hear about awesome political thrillers?

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

This one is really reminiscent of Westworld because it tackles the same fascinating (and scary) topic: consciousness in robots. In All Systems Red, a self-aware android on a mission in space has hacked its governor module and now refers to itself as “Murderbot,” scornful of humans. But when a neighboring mission goes dark, even the robot wants to find out what happened. This novel is especially frightening because it poses the question of what happens when robots outsmart humans… which seems to be very plausible in the near future.

The Boost by Stephen Baker

What happens when artificial intelligence gets installed into the brains of 99% of the human population? For one, a serious breach of privacy. In The Boost, Ralph notices that the new update to their brain chips will open a surveillance gate that could leave Americans extremely vulnerable… but in an attempt to expose this flaw, Ralph experiences resistance that threatens his life. His chip has been ripped out of his head, so now he has to fight back with his only analog tool: his brain.

Chasing Shadows by David Brin

We’re switching it up with a short story collection — and this anthology is hyper-realistic. Collected by David Brin (a legend) and written by other SF luminaries, Chasing Shadows examines the present-day increase in video surveillance and the state of technological transparency… ultimately revealing what the world might look like down the line (spoiler: dystopia).

If you’re looking for a quick yet horrifying non-fiction read, check out this 2-part article.

Written by Stephen Baker

Have you ever noticed that the “cherry” flavor in candy and cough drops tastes nothing like a real cherry? Yet it shares three attributes with the fruit. It has the same name, it’s red, and it’s sweet. Over time, many of us have grown to accept that fake flavor as a second type of cherry. I actually like it.

In one chapter of my novel, The Boost, I tried to imagine the early years of virtual food apps. The idea in the book is that our cognitive brain implants (or “boosts”) will allow us to live on a diet of tasteless kibble. But unlike house cats, we’ll be able to enhance those pellets with food apps, which will simulate in the brain what it feels like to eat Buffalo chicken wings, cheddar cheese, vanilla yogurt, you name it. Even cherries.

In the book, two brothers, Ralf and Simon, discuss this. Simon is older. He was born before the boosts arrived from China (in the 2040s) and he still struggles adjusting to enhanced cognition. He has trouble sending messages with his thoughts, and the idea of jumping into other people’s boosts and experiencing the world through their senses—“riding shotgun”—is inconceivable to him. His younger brother, Ralf, is a native to boostsphere, and he runs his “dry brain” effortlessly. (For reasons I won’t go into here, Ralf has had his boost ripped out and is rendered “wild.” It feels to him as if he’s had a lobotomy.)

Simon explains to Ralf how in the early years, the food apps were extremely crude. They were as foreign to the real flavors as artificial cherry is to cherry. And yet the younger generation grew up accepting them as the real thing. This always bothered Simon.

Ralf, a technologist, explains that much of the effect is psychological. The apps merely suggest the flavors, and the brain does the rest of the work, matching the experience to its expectations. So if people like Ralf are more willing to believe it’s cherry, that’s what they taste. What’s more, Ralf says, the apps are getting more real every day. Cherry is getting closer to the real cherry. He adds that the virtual sexual worlds—where Simon spends quite a bit of time—are also getting more realistic.

Here Simon complains again. He says he doesn’t want to the virtual worlds to be too real, or he’ll have trouble remembering where he is, and even who he is. This is a real design issue for developers of virtual worlds. If certain types of movement feel too real, people in virtual reality games sometimes experience nausea. It’s called “simulation sickness” and usually involves virtual movement that the inner ear isn’t actually experiencing. This confuses the brain. Sometimes people vomit.

Simon wants there to be a clear divide between the two worlds. This too is a design challenge. For example, gamers might say they want war to feel realistic. But many of them, I’m betting, don’t really want to see what happens to a nearby buddy who’s struck by a hollow-tipped bullet or a grenade. And they certainly don’t want to feel much pain themselves. In short, they want a degree of fantasy. Serving up the right blend is the challenge.

Returning, briefly, to food: perhaps the answer is not to attempt to reproduce unique flavors, like cherry, butter, or a 1976 bottle of Bordeaux, but instead to come up with new ones. Why, in a sensory world with limitless possibilities, should we limit ourselves to stuff that actually grows on bushes or trees, or lives on farms?

The IBM team that built Watson, the Jeopardy computer (which I wrote a book about), is taking steps in that direction. They’re getting the computer to sift through millions of different food combinations and suggest new recipes most likely to excite human taste buds. They recently sent me one of Watson’s first creations, a bottle of Bengali Butternut BBQ Sauce. It’s a yellowish blend featuring wine, squash, tamarind, garlic, and a host of other ingredients dreamed up by a data-combing supercomputer. (I’d give it a B; my wife can’t stand it.)

The Watson team, however, is constrained by what’s available in the physical world. In the future, when all of us (except for the wild) carry networked supercomputers between our ears, developers will be able to manufacture combinations that tickle our senses and have nothing to do with cherries or any other food that we actually put into our mouth. Maybe that’ll satisfy Simon, though I wouldn’t bet on it.

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From the Tor/Forge May 19th newsletter. Sign up to receive our newsletter via email.

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Tag: Stephen Baker

6 Fascinating Books to Read While Awaiting Season 2 of Westworld