2040

Domingos offers a speculative novel that looks at the future of American politics driven by artificial intelligence and culture wars.

A presidential debate in the year 2040 features two candidates: Republican PresiBot, an AI created by KumbAI, a startup tech company; and Democrat John Raging Bull, a Lakota chief. The Democrat expresses disdain for “the colonizers’ machine”; the Republican accuses Raging Bull of not being Native American. After a mechanical malfunction causes chaos, Ethan Burnswagger and Arvind Subramanian (KumbAI’s CEO and CTO, respectively) brainstorm strategy and recount how they came to be in this situation. Soon, they’re whisked away to Washington, D.C., to meet with Dave Newald, the successful CEO of Happinet, which uses technology to control people’s emotions; he offers them $350 million for their company. As Raging Bull discusses political strategy with his campaign manager, Naomi Jackson, Arvin pitches PresiBot’s AI system to Mike Granite, another potential investor. Along the way, the KumbAI duo navigates various threats to PresiBot while aiming to keeping him running properly. Externally, they face the public skepticism, media scrutiny, and the unpredictable actions of a political opponent; internally, they face the technological limitations and flaws of PresiBot itself, as well as tensions within their own team about how to manage them. The novel reaches its climax during a follow-up debate; afterward, as one character puts it, “the real roller coaster ride begins.” Domingos’ novel is a fast-paced adventure that satirizes politics and the tech world. He not only succeeds at illustrating the dangers of advanced AI, but also finds just the right element in each scene to keep readers engaged and laughing (while keeping the preachiness to a minimum). The book is full of great lines that highlight technology’s modern influence on humanity, as when Newald comments, “Emotions are just numbers. They can be measured and tweaked like anything else.” Nonetheless, the story is rife with tension, and it never lets readers forget how dangerously close fiction can be to reality.

A deft and enjoyable satire of the near future.