Technology Ethics: Book Review

I was given the opportunity to read an anthology of short stories about the ethical dilemma that can occur in technology in the future. I normally don’t read things like this but this year I have been wanting to get out of my comfort zone. Starting with this!

After Dinner Conversations is an online magazine that publishes short stories about philosophy and ethical problems. I personally will be submitting to this magazine in my future as part of my goals to work on becoming a more involved writer. This is my first time working with them and they have made everything super easy thus far. I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes when I submit my work as well. Now on to the review!

Since it’s an anthology, there are multiple stories in one book. I’m going to break it down by short story and then how they all are together in the book.

Abrama’s End Game

This short story deals with the ethical dilemma of whether or not AI are actually people. The story is set up to show us that a video game that was created had been used for money laundering. The government isn’t to keen on that so they told them to shut it down. When the AI in the game find out about this, they do everything they can from their world, to save it.

I really enjoyed this story. I personally am slightly scared of all the possibilities that AI can give the world. This story also shows parts of the bad side of advancing technology, just with the ability to launder money in a video game. On the flip side, it shows the possibilities of the advancements as well. Giving people the opportunity to be anything they want to be in a different world. Whether its to escape the daily grind at their current job, or if it’s escape their body and walk around in a world they can explore with no boundaries.

The Formula

This is a short story about the formula in which AI saves humans. Putting children ahead of adults, even if their ages are only a few days apart. There are a group of boys that are involved in an accident and because of this formula, one of the boys passes away. The injuries were more severe than others. This was taken into account, but ultimately the age of the boys is what made the decision of life or death that day.

Another story that scares the crap out of me. What if that were my kid? I would want the one who had the worst injury to be taken care of first. It was at this point that I realized I loved what After Dinner Conversation was doing. I wanted to read this book with a book club and discuss this with people.

Give the Robot The Impossible Job

Man this one was a wild ride. It’s a little hard to explain without giving it all away either. This world has robots that are teachers. They are given a set amount of minutes to help a case, and their goal is to achieve Free Study, where they can focus on what they want to, in order to help other humans as well. The robot that we follow, Quinn, is given an Impossible Case, she’s to change the course of a budding serial killer.

I loved this right off the bat because of the serial killer aspect, I really enjoy true crime, and then I got to the middle of the story and it was getting a little crazy. Quinn made some risky decisions and honestly I don’t know if I would’ve agreed with all of them if it were my kid she was trying to help. It got kind of dark and twisty and I liked it.

Sow

This one is an extremely short story about a pilot who is given a mission to drop some capsules on another planet to make it possible for humans to be there in the future. They bring up some good points on whether or not he should even be doing this. Overall, I wished this one gave a little more background or more information about the aftermath of his decision.

Cicada

I felt that this short story was a high level thought provoking story. It’s about a journalist following a scientist who is in trouble with the government for not giving them her research that proved how to transport anything to anywhere. The story takes us through the aftermath when the scientist is reported dead. Cicada was thought provoking and I really enjoyed this one.

The Things We Give

The story of The Things We Give is a little too close to reality for me. I could see myself getting into a situation such as this one and have to do the same. The main character, Martha, sells a few years of her life in order to pay off her parents debt. I could see myself doing that for sure. I really thought about this one for a long time and still think about it after finishing it a few days ago. Makes you think, how much is a human life really worth?

Two-Percenters

In Two-Percenters, the minority is Gifted and sectioned off into groups that they will flourish in. The main message of the story is whether or not the wholes should be reversed. There are some consequences to reversing the roles, everything comes with a price, and the characters discuss this dilemma for a little while before the story continues.

I read a book that reminded me a little of this story. It is called the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld, where everyone can become Pretty at a certain age. The Pretties were treated better, and the Uglies were kept away from the Pretties and their parties and all of that. The series goes through a bunch of twists and turns but it kind of follows this, what if everyone was the same theme. I love this series and I’m currently getting the entire series for my personal library and I will be reading them again soon.

The Empathery

The Empathery is a weird one. The story says that when you switch bodies with someone, it’ll teach you more about empathy and putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, literally. The story though shows us it’s a very 50/50 shot. The nuclear family that is presented to us, a husband and wife with their son and daughter, was split down the middle with whether or not it was actually helpful and taught them something. The husband and the daughter felt like they were taught something, while the wife and son felt conned.

I personally wouldn’t mind body swapping with people. It could be fun, but I don’t think that it should be under the ruse of gaining more empathy. Let’s be honest, no one is going to choose to pay to be put in a body if it’s not better than the one they already have. Whether it be younger, more beautiful, more able bodied, etc.. Unless that person already has a lot of empathy and genuinely wants to experience these hardships.

Cost of Human Life

Cost of Human Life is a story exactly as it’s titled. There is a programmer that is trying to work out all the kinks of a train being controlled by AI and then there is the normal five people die or one person dies dilemma. Surprisingly though, the AI chooses to stay on course and kill the five people because of a bunch of different money and time aspects. The programmer tries different programming to see if it changes anything. *Spoiler Alert*

It doesn’t. The AI always chooses to kill the five people. This story left a sour taste of truth in my mouth because the way that it’s explained, I know that it’s how anyone in corporate America would think of it as well. If you take the humanity out of it and think of it in money and time, the five people would lose every single time. It’s honestly horrifying because I was able to understand the reasonings as well.

All of these stories together were an obvious theme of the technology ethics. That is the title after all. I like the way that they were ordered, and each of them were interesting in their own way. Some of them weren’t able to hold my attention as well as others but that’s when I was happy about them being short stories because I could push my way through the extra couple of pages to finish, instead of a whole 200 or more pages. Overall, I think this is a good book for book clubs, discussion boards, and classrooms. If this is the sort of thing that you enjoy reading for fun, I absolutely love that for you and you’ll probably love this collection as well.