I'm reading the Stardrifter series by David Collins-Rivera, and reviewing each book as I finish it. The short story Robot Overlords, is a story about a troublesome AI (which I know sounds like the very tropiest of science fiction tropes but it's not like that, I promise). This review contains spoilers.
It's bold to write a sci fi story featuring artificial intelligence. Maybe in another century it'll be safe to do it, but the justifiably profound impact that 2001: A Space Odyssey has had on the genre is today still unavoidable. Maybe that's why David cheekily titled this story Robot Overlords. It's a gag in itself. Robot overlords? Rogue AI? Let's just address the elephants in the room, acknowledge them for what they are, and then move on. You get over your own expectations early on.
Or do you?
The AI in question is the shipboard instance of Zooks, and the story starts out with Zooks explaining to the portion of the crew that's still actually doing their jobs that it does not consider them friends. They're not like Litany, who appreciated and was kind to Zooks. Of course, Litany is also egotistical and manipulative, but she's charismatic and she had most everyone fooled. Including, it seems, the ship's AI.
This is the first hint at the real story, and it's a good one that I won't spoil here. It's not giving much away to say that Zooks doesn't understand humans like humans understand other humans.
No wait, that's wrong.
Zooks doesn't understand humans the way humans don't understand other humans.
Maybe it's an obvious comparison to say that some humans don't quite connect with other humans. Call us geeks or nerds or "on the spectrum" or whatever, but some of us find meatware difficult to decode. It's easy to imagine that an AI might have the same trouble. So when a charming and charismatic crew member like Litany appears to take interest in you, and makes you feel like the centre of the universe, you might be likely to believe it. Zooks believes Litany is its friend, and it does favours for its friends, and ignores the rest.
Here's the actual conflict of the story. Some shipments have been auto-deployed and are scheduled to rendez-vous with a cargo boat later. The problem is, the shipment contains faulty parts, but because it's an automated process they'll be stowed on the cargo boat and distributed without anyone realising that the new parts they're using are guaranteed to fail.
The Sheila has been sent out to make sure the shipment doesn't get to the cargo boat.
The Sheila is too far out to get a weapons lock on the shipment, though, and the AI refuses to assist because the equipment Ejoq wants to destroy is company property. (Actually it's not strictly company property, as Zooks explains several times, but it's being rented by the company and so destroying it seems an awful lot like corporate sabotage.)
Frustrating? A little, yeah. But there are work-arounds, right? The Sheila could speed up to get closer so Ejoq could try to get a visual lock on the shipment. Of course, if they tried that, the cargo boat would arrive in the mean time and all it would see was a ship firing in their general direction in an attempt to destroy their cargo. Not a good look.
OK, well how about just picking up the phone and calling somebody to alert them of the problem? That could work, except Ejoq's calls are intercepted by an AI operator, and it immediately tells the crew that they have no business communicating on that channel. One of Ejoq's shipmates manages to convince Zooks to try to make the call on their behalf, but it gets the same response.
It's a puzzle, and it's a lot of fun finding out how the crew goes about trying to solve it. Zooks is an entertaining AI character, too, with misaligned allegiances, maybe a slightly juvenile understanding of the way the world works, and a strong conviction that AI are people.
Maybe this story tells us that intelligence is limited no matter whether it's brain chemistry or silicon switches. Or maybe it's saying that real intelligence comes from experience. Or maybe it's saying that humans are complex.
Possibly, it's just a story about an interesting puzzle, and how circumstance and interpretation can make all the difference.
Whatever point you derive from the story, I can't help but marvel at the author's ability to turn a story about cargo management into something that inspires you into deep introspection about how you perceive other people and yourself. And besides Stinna in Risk Analysis, the AI is one of the most entertaining and identifiable Stardrifter characters, so I've enjoyed reading this one over and over again, just for the chance to hang out with Zooks.