I Am AI by Ai Jiang

I would like to thank the author for an advance copy of this novelette in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher - Shortwave Media

Published - Out now

Price - £3.20 Kindle ebook £7.01 paperback

If you have the opportunity to give up humanity for efficiency, mechanical invincibility, and to surpass human limitations. . . would you?

Ai is a cyborg, under the guise of an AI writing program, who struggles to keep up with the never-blinking city of Emit as it threatens to leave all those like her behind.

I don’t know about you but I often feel I’m running against the clock these days. Getting work done on time; trying to finish to spend time with loved ones, getting the book reviews out - particularly since the pandemic everything feels rushed. Or perhaps I’m more conscious of how much stuff life requires. Who hasn’t dreamed of being more productive, being faster and not having to worry about things like sleep? In Ai Jiang’s great novelette I Am Ai we go into a far future where the daily grind can be all that depressed us from life and death, we battle our human skills against those of Ai and yet one character wishes to go beyond their limits.

Ai is now a cyborg running on a battery every day. Working with over a hundred paying (very cheaply) for her services as a writer. The cyber verse she works in is a fiercely competitive grind as the big corporation owning the city of Emit is launching its next cheaper AI competitor. For Ai it increasingly looks like her only option is to have further enhancements - remove her heart and brain for mechanics components to give her the next edge even if that means also more working hours or customers to deal with. But will that really bring success?

This is a compelling short tale that is tackling a lot of topical issues but also delivering a powerful emotional tale in its own right. I loved the far future setting of Emit which is a place terrifying more in its lack of any compassion rather than standard dictatorship. Capitalism has led to a ruined environment - one concept is people engineered to eat plastic who now face extinction; life expectancy is under fifty and when you die corporations look for anyone close to you to transfer ever more debt onto their backs. As such a daily grinding hustle is the only way to keep your head above water.

This tale though is less one of corporate fight back than battling that desire/self disgust to do more, be better and that terrible phrase be more productive. Jiang makes us live a few days in Ai’s shoes - the ticking clock of their internal battery life getting ever faster; then a plunge into non-stop work hustles and increasingly having no time for friends or loved ones. But for Ai the issue is not society but their own human body.

I really liked how we get to feel Ai’s internal battle and extremely relatable. Why of course more cybernetics, more hours and more work is the answer. It’s very twenty first century conversation. Alongside this the tale briefly notes that AI workers are going to be competitors but Jiang asks can they actually capture a human quality. Is that something to keep precious? Do we not need our connections with our community to still have that.

This is an extremely powerful intelligent and yet emotional journey into the future which feels very relevant to today and also that very inhuman battle between our desire to work and also have an actual life. Strongly recommended!