Imagine if artificial intelligence were earnest, benign and self-sacrificing? That's what Kazuo Ishiguro did a couple of years ago in this subtle, teasing vision of a society in the not-to-distant future that now has been completely obliterated by the introduction of Chat GPT in the real world. Ishiguro approached AI intuitively and empathically, from an artist's perspective, unlike the actual machine learning that has fueled the current iteration and hysteria with its potential for enhancing the goals of bad actors.
I'd probably like the novel more if I were in a book group examining its themes which, for the most part don't interest me because of my atheism. Klara's worship of the sun, which provides her sustenance, is analogous to god, and the bargain she thinks she thinks she makes with it strikes me as something inconceivable unless of course her creator is religious and made that part of her identity. Perhaps this is Ishiguro's point--if properly configured, AI will be a lot like the real thing--but I don't buy it for the same reason that I reject algorithmic cultural recommendations. Autonomy is what makes us human and the more control we cede to computers, the likelier we will be to evolve into those awful interplanetary cruisers in Wall E.
Still, if you accept Ishiguro's premise, his meticulous, slow-burn execution resonates. Like A.I., Steven Spielberg's much-maligned early masterpiece, the novel left me feeling just as sorry for Klara even though she accepts her fate far more stoically than David. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about the world," explains the mother as she abandons her manufactured child.
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