Culpability

“And this, I propose, is the inhuman soul of the algorithm. It may think for us, it may work for us, it may organize our lives for us. But the algorithm will never bleed for us. The algorithm will never suffer for us. The algorithm will never mourn for us.”

This quotation from Lorelei Shaw’s fictional book, Silicon Souls: On the Culpability of Artificial Minds, acts as an epitaph for the narrative, introducing its thematic discussion on Negotiating Responsibility in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Here, Lorelei describes how AI algorithms don’t have the capacity for human emotions, and since they cannot act based on feeling, they don’t have the capacity to develop their own morality. Her repetition of “The algorithm will never” emphasizes each separate example of its lack of humanity to highlight what it cannot do and what it lacks.

“Like an algorithm, a family is endlessly complex yet adaptable and resilient, parents and children working together as parts of an intricate, coordinated whole. Sure, there might some bugs in the system, a glitch or two. But if you simply tweaked the constants from time to time, life would continue to unfold in its intricate yet predictable patterns, an endless cycle of inputs and outputs subject to your knowledge and control.”

Lorelei has a personal axiom that a family is like an algorithm, and this quotation explains that metaphor by using technological language to describe the family unit’s components and actions. Algorithms are a symbol of order in the novel, and Lorelei employs this allusion to maintain a certain predictability in her familial life and ease the chaotic stress she sometimes feels.