In an unsettling near future, the dead can be uploaded to machines and kept in service by the living…
We’re pleased to share an excerpt from Katie M. Flynn’s debut novel, The Companions—available now from Gallery/Scout Press.
We’ve been telling ourselves stories about Artificial Intelligence for a long time. I grew up loving these stories. Movies and TV shows fueled my early curiosity: the killer machines of Terminator; the dependable sidekicks of Star Wars and Star Trek: Next Generation; that perfect pairing: David Hasselhoff’s hair and KITT, the artificially intelligent Trans Am in Knight Rider.
The stories we tell ourselves about AI often fall into two camps. On one side are the they’ll take over and destroy us all people; on the other are the they will serve us well folks. The gulf between these positions is…expansive. We tell ourselves these stories because we both fear and desire this technology’s advancement, and now that AI is a part of our lives, we grow increasingly reliant upon it while simultaneously uncertain, even wary, of its power over us.
