Culpability

★★★★★★★★★☆ 9/10

320 pages

What’s it about?

The Cassidy-Shaw family has a state-of-the-art autonomous minivan. When the family of five heads out to a lacrosse game, they let seventeen-year-old Charlie drive. When the van is involved in an accident, each family member feels complicit.

What did it make me think about?

This story is all about AI and who is culpable when something goes wrong- the machine or the man who created it...

Should I read it?

This is my second novel by Bruce Holsinger, and they were both compulsively readable. The Displacements was a story about climate change, and this novel is all about the ethical and moral complications of AI. Both were page-turners with lots to think about. If you are looking for a plot-driven book that will make your head spin, then read either of these novels. Both left me wanting to talk about all the ideas and implications Bruce Holsinger points out. In his latest novel, the discussion would not only be about AI but about family, parenting, and the choices we all make. This book would make for fascinating discussions.

A passage I marked

"We are all familiar with the so-called butterfly effect: the notion that even the smallest changes in a dynamic system may lead to large-scale, remote, and unpredictable variations in the same system's behavior. A butterly flaps his wings in Iowa, and three weeks later a monster typhoon levels a town in Indonesia. In the age of Artificial Intelligence, the delicate butterfly gives way to the autonomous drone, and unpredictability must now factor into every calculation that we make about the future effects of algorithms. Those working in the ethics of AI feel the constant weight of such deliberations: the moral choices entailed in shaping a technology that may have catastrophic consequences for our world. We all bear the unknowing burden of the butterfly, flapping our fragile wings in ignorance of what is to come."