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Artificial Intelligence, AI, is currently promoted as a panacea, or else it is forecast as a peril, currently there appears to be no middle ground. This thriller’s backcloth explores how much of AI, today, is fact, and how much is fable? It is science-fiction books and movies usually suggest it will all end in some sort of dystopian future.
These fears are levelled at ASI, which describes a system that is sapient and/or sentient, one able to interact directly with its environment, one able to experience and process feelings and emotions – but this has yet to be realised! ASI, or super AI, implies a system more capable than a human, super-human. ASI does not exist today.
Current applications are about ANI, narrow or weak AI, usually focused on a single task. It is mere data mining, and represents most of our current level of competence.
The next level is AGI, or general AI. It has multiple applicationsand seeks to replicate human capabilities. For example, using apparently natural speech in a conversation or emulating writing styles to produce articles and scripts. These are currently quite limited and it may be that slavishly copying humans is not a good approach!
Artifice is a thriller with two antagonists and no individual hero or heroine. Instead an unlikely group coalesces to combat their ill intent. Artificial Intelligence is the thriller’s backcloth, yet there are no inflated sci-fi attributes, instead it features AI’s current ingenuity. The very elusiveness of this serves as the major underlying theme.
Goran Ivan Gigović, or Gig, is a celebrity historian, someone the electronic media uses as a ‘hired gun’ to dismantle other academics’ notions. Now bored with that role, he concludes that AI is a fluid concept in which someone with his strong ideas and opinions can succeed. His combative personality draws him towards the negative aspects of the technology as he elbows his company, Artifice, to the forefront.
The second antagonist, Adnan al-Hassan, presents himself as a cultural philanthropist when he provides seed finance for Gig. Yet, he is also committed to revenge old enemies – the Russians who killed his family. As an Iraqi/Syrian warlord, his extensive tendrils have ceded him control of a Sumerian site that dedicates him to a deeper religious purpose.
A disparate group emerges to interfere with Adnan’s plans – Tom a jobbing journalist, Liz an academic specialising in ancient history, Jerry a leading AI professor and Andy an unambitious suburban Met police detective. Can they pool resources to combat Artifice and halt Adnan’s ambitions to ignite World War lll?
Can they inveigle the AI system to encompass empathy? And can it be done in time to avoid a global disaster?
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