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Jay Balangue's avatar

A future dystopia where everyone is on pins and needles, violence is a hair’s breadth away, the government is oppressive, music is almost engineered rather than felt, and machines have emotional connections with people. Not much different from today in some respects. I enjoyed this very much, looking forward to more.

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Rainbow Roxy's avatar

Brilliant. The sensory input here is almost algorithmic. What if such detailed perception were processed by an emergent AI, generating its own narrative?

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Steven Cary's avatar

Oh wait, I just realized you may have been suggesting that I am myself an emergent AI, generating my own narrative. I assure you that I'm not, though my book dives deep into the similarities between humans and AI (brains vs. neural nets, both of which are poorly understood) and encourages readers to contemplate the nature of consciousness, specifically whether our advanced ability to express that consciousness through art is limited to humanity, as distinct from AI. For as Hobbes says, "what is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves, but so many strings; and the joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body, such as was intended by the Artificer?" Your work sounds cool, looking forward to reading more.

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Steven Cary's avatar

Glad you enjoyed! I definitely explore themes of generative AI consciousness in later chapters, please subscibe to stay tuned!

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Eileene Dillman's avatar

Steve. I love this so far. Great characters. Can’t wait for chapter 2

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