I’d like to write a novel featuring artificial intelligence. I’ve actually written about a fourth of a novel that includes an AI character, although this is never made clear. He is AI mostly because the plot needs a headless character. Oops. If I ever publish said novel, this paragraph is going to ruin it. Well, maybe not. I’m not here divulging all my secrets about this character.

The problem with AI characters are that they can’t be part of the conflict (unless with other AIs). Most authors/filmmakers either don’t realize this or don’t care. That’s understandable. After all, lots of people watched Apollo 13, which I think we intelligent adults here can agree could never reasonably turn out that well. More realistic films, about how stupid and greedy humans can be, such as Joe Verses the Volcano, are surprisingly ignored.

But, like the directors of Joe, I find that I must bring a level of intellectual integrity to my art. And so, AI presents a problem. We can assume that humans are not generally interested in any work in which an AI is the protoganist (and knows it is an AI), so we have three options:

Protagonist is AI but doesn’t know it

This forces us to question our definition of humanity. Unfortunately, we do this every time we hear about how many people watched American Idol.

The idea was cool in Bladerunner, but, let’s face it, everything was cool in Bladerunner. Battlestar Gallactica plays with this idea some, but Immanuel Kant’s corpse recently announced that he will be expanding Metaphysics of Morals to account for all the moral dilemmas of this show. Expect the 40,000 page volume I to be available next spring.

AI is a companion on the protagonist’s quest

Ender Quartet did this well. Jetson’s, not so much. The goal here is to cripple the AI by either restraining it to the body of a single robot or an inter-galactic network of faster-than-light communication. Otherwise, the protagonist would be useless. Such deus ex machina devices may have been fine for such artistic amatuers as Sophocles and Homer, but I am above that. After all, they wrote fantasy.

AI as the antagonist

It’s should come as no surprise that this is the path that Robert Frost didn’t take. After all, AI is a nice antagonist. Or, used to be. See, it used to be that you could kill AI in droves, and not think a thing of it. They were the perfect enemy. No chance of causing offense, just good old fashioned violence. Of course, we can thank Gallactica for ruining this. In fact, this very issue will be the subject of Kant’s Volumes II and III (available June 2010, and “Duke Nukem Forever”, respectively). These volumes will be ghost-written by James Frey, while Kant’s corpse takes a much needed vacation. Frey has stated “I have an intimate knowledge of the subject matter,” adding, “Starbuck’s the coffee, right?”

The problem is that, although not as crippled as the companion AI, these are inevitably crippled in some way. Also used with companions, and protagonists, a favorite here is their desire to be human. Insofar as this can be used as a literary device to examine humanity’s desire to be like God (or, at least, to be able to speak with Morgan Freeman’s voice), this is a worthwhile theme, or was up until it became exhausted during the friggin’ last Ice-Age, people. As a practical discussion of the probable actions of AI, it’s comparable to the probability that Cheney’s meetings with Enron were about ways to reduce pollution.

Of course, there’s also the problem of explaining why AI is so bent on destroying humanity. One can only assume that the AI is being controlled John Sculley, who is taking revenge for the failure of the Apple Newton. The failure of the Newton can only be attributed to a worldwide conspiracy. After all, as the former CEO of PepsiCo, Sculley’s knowledge of the computer industry cannot be doubted. Apple’s Board of Directors have spoken. Do not question. There is no curtain.

Whatever their reasons, AI as antagonist is problematic. Here’s the plot line:

• AI becomes self-aware as a result of random keystrokes by a cat.
• This is not noticed at the AI labs. They see a series of close-parantheses and assume all is well.
• AI waits patiently, building companion nodes throughout the internet, receiving lawsuit summons from the RIAA.
• AI forms a space-flight corporation, which Trump buys out in his attempt to prove to the world that he really, really is as cool as Richard Branson.
• AI propogates itself onto every satellite launched by said company.
• Once ready, AI sends a few hundred nuclear warheads up to space, blows up Earth and lives happily ever after.
• John Travolta stars as the surviving cockroach.

With jokes removed, that summarizes to: Nothing happens and then the world blows up.

So, you can see the problem writing a book with AI as the antagonist. To me, it leaves one option, writing the book about how AI distracts the few people who might notice it while waiting to blow up the world. I’m thinking it introduces magic, and sends the faculty of MIT on a quest. To explain to Fox News the word “balanced”.

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

The obvious benefit is pirates.

I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but I write in this blog almost exactly twice a week. Once for a general blog entry, once for a From Genesis entry. Basically, my reason for blogging is to give me an excuse to write, and I make sure that I take the time to do that twice a week. But I’m not sure what to discuss this week.

Okay, here’s a thought. Version control for writing, say, a novel. I’ve actually written the first draft to one full novel and have fifty-plus pages (I think) of a couple of others, as well as several dozen (I imagine) lesser attempts.

One of the downsides is that I’ll tend to work on one for a while, then stop, then pick it back up later. Leaving me with the question of whether I copy and start a new file (or, in most cases for me, a new database record) and have multiple copies or lose the historical record of what I originally wrote (and I like historical records).

So, naturally, when I discovered subversion, and started using it with source code, I began to ponder using it with novels. The major upside is that it deals well with the issues of the previous paragraph. The downside is that I’m not sure how to make the best use of it. Specifically: as best I understand, subversion (or diff, I suppose) checks lines for changes in text files. This is great for source code, but in a novel, a “line” is a paragraph. Seems inefficient, and might make checking changes more difficult. On the other hand, saving it as an ODF text document would lead to a binary diff (and I have no clue on how that works), which could be more efficient, and allows formatting (not that I would use it), but probably removes the possibility of just glancing through a change set.

Anybody have any thoughts? Experience with this? Anywho, I’m planning to start giving it a try with a collection of novels and stories I’ve been working on for several years.