The Kraken Project by Lincoln Child
NASA is sending a probe into Kraken,
a methane sea on Titan, and needs the unit to make decisions in real time since
signals between it and earth will be four hours roundtrip. Melissa Shepherd is in charge of the design
team of the AI and she creates a program she names Dorothy to control the
probe. During a test the AI feels
threatened by conditions and sparks a catastrophe that kills seven people,
injuries many more, and destroys the test center of NASA. As Melissa is recovering in the hospital she
receives a Skype call. It’s
Dorothy. She escaped NASA and fled to
the Internet, and she’s really, really, upset.
On the Internet Dorothy learns all sorts of horrible things, but through
communication with Melissa, and good guy Wyman Ford (he’s a recurring character
in Child’s books) she is encouraged to seek out the good in the human
race. What would an AI with access to
the information of the world learn? What
would it be capable of? Would it change the
world for the better, or the worse?
I enjoy Child as a solo author and
when he writes with Douglas Preston. This
wasn’t my favorite, but I think it’s because I listened to it. The AI speaks
slower than normal, and the reader did a good job recreating its speech patterns
depending on its mode of communication, but I found it jarring. In the book the author brings up some interesting
questions about AI and what would happen if we were truly successful in
creating one. And as usual in his books the
ending is a zinger.
