62 pages
Published 2023
Read July 2
Rating: 4 out of 5
A brief, heartbreaking novelette on capitalist power and worker burnout in the bleak tech-bro dystopia of an all-too-plausible future. An all-encompassing corporation innovates new ways to pile debt onto the working classes, debt which accumulates through the generations — getting passed on to acquaintances if someone dies without family. Elders eke out an existence offering their housekeeping services for cheaper than the “techies” would pay to machines. Our narrator Ai once aspired to write stories, but now merely produces content, ghostwriting under the guise of an AI. She replaces her human parts, bit by bit, with machine “upgrades,” hoping to work harder, more efficiently, to mute her emotions. But becoming a cyborg leaves Ai open to planned obsolescence and decreasing battery life, to being seen as a tool even by those in her community.
Honestly the only implausible note in this scenario is that it’s set a thousand years into the future, instead of thirty. After all, like all good science fiction, I AM AI is about today: a deeply personal story that blurs between autofiction and speculation.
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