The Lifecycle of Software Objects

by Ted Chiang

Hardcover, 150 pages

English language

Published April 5, 2010 by Subterranean Press.

ISBN:: 978-1-59606-317-4

(37 reviews)

What's the best way to create artificial intelligence? In 1950, Alan Turing wrote, "Many people think that a very abstract activity, like the playing of chess, would be best. It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English. This process could follow the normal teaching of a child. Things would be pointed out and named, etc. Again I do not know what the right answer is, but I think both approaches should be tried."

The first approach has been tried many times in both science fiction and reality. In this new novella, at over 30,000 words, his longest work to date, Ted Chiang offers a detailed imagining of how the second approach might work within the contemporary landscape of startup companies, massively-multiplayer online gaming, and open-source software. It's a story of two people and the artificial intelligences they helped create, following them for more than a decade as they deal with the upgrades and obsolescence that are inevitable in the world of software. At the same time, it's an examination of the difference between processing power and intelligence, and of what it means to have a real relationship with an artificial entity.

1 edition

gimley reviewed The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang

Review of 'The Lifecycle of Software Objects' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

The only reason to stop the story where he did is because he's planning a sequel. But he's probably not. If he does, I'll give him his 5th star.

But maybe it stops where it does because, like Ana, the author wants to preserve Jax's innocence. And Marco's as well since he has to stop when the story stops. Characters in a story are stuck in their text as surely as software is bound by hardware. I personally don't believe in conscious software any more than I believe the characters in fiction have actual lives, but that doesn't spoil fiction for me, including this work of fiction.

The tech world with its reliance on money to bring it to life feels tragic to me and the plight of the digients and the humans who love them brings that feeling home to me. Is human life tragic because we have no choice but to mature into sexual beings? Ana says it's the coercion she objects to but the need for finances is a constant coercion in the world.

But some coercions are worse than others. Being a wage slave isn't as bad as being a prostitute. Forced overtime isn't as bad as rape.

Are arranged marriages statistically less successful than those chosen by our own free will? If we're raised in that culture, and our upbringing makes us find a family negotiated union acceptable, perhaps it works out to our advantage?

Is it consensual if we're chemically induced to like what we get? Aren't we chemical beings just like digients are software ones? We like to think we're more than just chemistry which is why we blame junkies for shooting up and think they can just say "no." (I'm in the middle of reading [a:Gabor Maté|4068613|Gabor Maté|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1454508047p2/4068613.jpg]'s book about addiction in which he argues it's possible but prohibitively difficult to walk away from one's drug.) An algorithmic being is nothing BUT coercion even with random number generators hiding the determinism. That a computer generated entity can respond to the love of their human trainer in some deeper way than a mood ring can change color with one's mood is but a literary fiction yet so many of us strive to be more like machines than humans to avoid the pain of being alive. We're all part digient so we can relate.

In the end I think Derek is right. Or maybe no one is right. I'd really like a sequel so we could find out. If this were a movie, there would be money for a sequel and thus there would be a sequel for that is the power of economics.

Unruly Stacks reviewed The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang

Review of 'The Lifecycle of Software Objects' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

This felt less like a complete story than an arc within a story, and it left me feeling unfulfilled that there wasn't more, because what's here is none too bad, if a bit dry.