MY CHILD, THE ALGORITHM

A striking reflection on the intersection of queer single parenthood and AI.

Left unexpectedly to reckon with life as a single parent, Silva turns to language to comprehend heartbreak, betrayal, and what it means to be human in the rapidly advancing digital age. “We joined up our bookcases and we joined up our minds and we joined up our bodies,” she writes. “Like a male seahorse I carried her egg. We queered pregnancy. But seahorses mate for life, and when our baby was born she left.” Told with frequent interjections from both her son (now a toddler) and an AI algorithm, both of which she feeds language to, the book is consistently surprising and far ranging in scope. Both the algorithm and her son respond in varying ways to that language. Their interruptions become part of the indelible fabric of Silva’s story, and the writing is curious, intelligent, propulsive, and memorable. Silva’s text manages to be both immensely readable at first glance and rewarding to those who choose to read slowly, savoring and annotating. Still, the algorithm never manages to be as interesting as the other elements in the narrative. “Like a writer editing a book, skipping back and forward, trying to figure out where to mention they have an ex-husband, the algorithm keeps looping back over what it has produced, adjusting and correcting itself, building a kind of temporary memory that will be wiped clean straight afterward,” writes the author. Consequently, it doesn’t approach the emotional peaks of the tender story at the heart of the book—but it does magnify loneliness and the singularity of experience, which was perhaps Silva’s intent. Ultimately, it’s a machine regurgitating language. Regardless, the author’s inventiveness and emotional urgency make this book an intriguing reading experience.

Silva is a playful theorist with an elastic intellect.