I still love fictional AI
Sort of spinning off Real AI changed the way I see fictional AI and i also hate fictional AIs now. I still love fictional AI.
The primary gap here is that I see no path from the stochastic parrots we have now to the general AIs proposed by science fiction. I sometimes get pedantic about this distinction. We have statistical Large Language Models marketed as AI. We have different machine learning models that are extremely good at different statistical tasks. For the most part, they're not very interesting as characters.
Good AI fiction overlaps with good alien fiction. How would a lifeform with radically different sensory perceptions and worldview interact with the world? What would their emotional lives be like? Some of the better stories are informed by deeper explorations of neurodivergence. Others are more speculative. The AI characters I love are also vehicles for exploring feminist and queer ideas about embodiment and passing. My favorites which I'll discuss here are Sidra from A Closed and Common Orbit, Murderbot from The Murderbot Diaries, and Breq from Ancillary Justice/Sword/Mercy.
In A Closed and Common Orbit, Lovelace awakes after an emergency reboot with no memory of a previous life as a working ship's AI (described in The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet). The crew just survived a traumatic crisis. Her prior version had a history, a lover, a different name, and rich friendships among the crew.
Pepper, a talented engineer, gives Lovelace an option: embodiment as an illegal android. Lovelace makes the leap, moves in with Pepper, and takes the name Sidra. Sidra struggles to pass as human having originally been designed to handle a radically different set of senses compared to two eyes, two ears, and a body.
Murderbot is a security construct who gets freedom by hacking it's punishment module. It doesn't want to pass as human ("disgusting!") or deal with emotions beyond a love of human-made serial media. Murderbot reluctantly develops relationships with a group of humans willing to work with its non-human modes of communication and boundaries.
Breq is a military warship reduced to a single cybernetic soldier-slave. Many of her conflicts center on the forced reduction from a multi-node computer intelligence to a single point of viewing the world. She struggles with the loss of her full capabilities, her uncertain role within her home culture, and remnant memories from her host body.
Passing is a significant challenge for all three. All three are illegal in different ways and at risk of being killed. However all three are embodied in ways that are significantly different from human beings. They were originally designed to experience the world from multiple perspectives beyond a single body. In addition, the bodies they have function in fundamentally different ways.
Companionship for all three requires finding people willing to accept different ways of interacting with the world. Murderbot's people know not to make direct eye contact or make certain kinds of small talk. Sidra finds a way to expand her senses to multiple perspectives with the help of trusted friends. Breq finds allies who trust her abilities and respect her boundaries.
A key feature that makes these characters interesting is they're not human, and were not created to imitate humans. They were not trained to write a person's email, memos, or tech documentation. They were built to manage complex data and technology under high-pressure situations. They are most successful when allowed to do the job they were built for. Sidra manages a bar wired so that she can observe patrons and staff from multiple perspectives. Murderbot continues to act as a security consultant and bodyguard for entire teams. Breq becomes a ship captain, fleet commander, and super-soldier. Their companions develop trust in their unique, non-human abilities.
All three would probably fail the classic "Turing test." In the end, I think that we're more likely to get to AI if we let bots be bots. But as storytelling the important part is exploring how differences in cognition and perception make interesting characters, and how that creates interesting ideas for relationships and conflicts.