Machinehood
S.B. Divya
★★★★★ 3/5
Fiction
A book exploring the questions everyone is (or should be) asking
Over lunch recently, a friend and I were discussing what is likely top of mind for many people: the future of jobs given increasing automation all around us and the recent advances in AI—esp. the hoopla around ChatGPT, Dall-E 2 etc. What kind of jobs will humans actually be employable for in the future when robots and AI, besides taking over all repetitive labor intensive work, will also outperform humans in creative, problem solving enterprises? What will human–AI coexistence look like? Can that be peaceful or is it destined for strife and penury for the masses? And how might technology change the very essence of what it means to be human? What are the implications of all this in the ethics of AI development?
S. B. Divya implicitly asks these very timely questions in her Hugo nominated sci-fi novel Machinehood.
Well crafted dystopian future world building
Machinehood examines a dystopian future set at the end of the 21st century, about seven decades into the future. This is the golden age for Biotech in a largely robot and human gig economy. With AI automation pervading all aspects of life, jobs for humans are scarce. To compete with robots in a highly competitive labor market, humans have to resort to pills that enhance their physical and mental capabilities. These pills are often at a cost to the human body and at best allow humans to perform mostly menial tasks at wages that make them competitive with bots/AI. Most people, like protagonists Welga and Nithya, earn barely enough to survive. The real overlords are apparently the pill developers that Ms. Divya calls The Funders.
There is a parallel and somewhat discredited effort by a faceless ‘Caliph of the Maghreb’ to merge machine tech and humans to help humans compete with robots. Such efforts had devastating consequences for human health in the past.
We are to assume that there is no real sentient AI in the mix—just a bunch of assistant AIs that are part of everyone’s daily life.
Enter the Machinehood: An organization that speaks on behalf of all intelligent machines, demanding with a threat of violence, that people stop pill production immediately and confer equal rights to all machines.
Two sisters-in-law, Welga and Nithya, living on opposite sides of the world are unwittingly drawn in to the unfolding events. They are courageous women who demonstrate strength in different ways—the two characters developed convincingly by Ms. Divya.
All of this makes for a plausible and promising premise that sadly does not deliver to potential mainly because Ms. Divya never really explores the meaning or implications of any of the numerous concepts she is exploring.
Technology was as habit-forming as every escapist, feel-good drug
A future incompletely explored:
After extremely promising world building that draws on current human existential angst in light of rapidly evolving technology, Machinehood unfortunately devolves into a poorly attempted thriller that neither entertains nor educates. After being promised a concept car, we are only delivered the chassis!
The central premise of the story is the emergence of sentient AI. But there are no self aware and (seemingly) conscious machines in the story! There is mention of the main characters’ personal bots but Ms. Divya’s characterization of those does not create any real empathy or bond. It’s easier to have feelings for R2-D2 than Welga’s Por Que. A definite and clearer exploration of sentience and what it means for human engagement and attachment was a must and sadly overlooked.
The economic set up of this future world is another important element that is poorly explored and explained. On the one hand, a future, bleak as it may be, where capable humans are at the mercy of gig jobs struggling to make ends meet, is eminently relatable. But what kind of economic system is it really? Are the capitalists and corporations making the robots and the underlying technology at the top of the food chain? What role does the government play? What power, if any, do the masses have? Do they vote? For what and who? All of this is also entirely overlooked. Instead all we are told is that the rich pill Funders call all the shots—whatever that means!
The pace of the book and writing style are further problems. It took me a week to plod through the book. At no point did I want to read just one more chapter before putting it down. There are numerous sequences that are just plain superfluous to the story. Significant portions of the book are devoted to a nameless Caliph portrayed as a villain. The US, for some unclear reason, is constantly looking for a pretext to invade his Islamic kingdom in Africa. This Caliph has no real bearing on the story and a needlessly introduced bugbear! The prose itself is quite banal which might be ok if the sci-fi compensated for it.
And then there is this whole Space based neo Buddhist bullshit thrown in that ends up making for a dreadful finale making me wonder what the point of it all was.
What I thought might be a point in favor of the book, was that a portion of the story with Nithya and her family, is set in southern India. She cooks (or asks her bots to cook) Sambar and enjoys spicy murukku. All that quickly soured when Ms. Divya succumbed to the western trope of “stray brown cows lounging on the shoulders of the street.” In 2095! Gimme a break!
Overall
Machinehood is a book that grapples with big ideas, but does not come awat the winner. I wonder what this book could have been with fewer diluting plot elements, and perhaps much stronger editing. Nevertheless, I’d recommend it just for the thought provoking themes—and questions that humanity is inevitably going to have to contend with.