Recently, there’s been a sudden increase in interest surrounding Artificial Intelligence; in particular the fear of potential dangers of this development have come to the fore. The subject has long been popular with science fiction writers, and I’ve had a go at it in a couple of my novels.

In ‘The Methuselah Strain’, my story of a brilliant woman in search of a man to act as the natural father of the child she so desperately wants is set against a background of AI. This story explores potential dangers posed by androids that might employ the system to make themselves more attractive to humans than real people, emphasising the desirability of ‘perfection’ as perceived by those who’ve lost touch with reality. My attitude to that aspect of AI hasn’t altered with this renewed interest and examination of the issues.

The other area of concern relates to the potential danger of AI becoming self-aware and, as a result, deciding illogical elements essential to human make-up would inevitably cause it to reject humanity as ‘worthy’ and eliminate us from our planet. I explored this aspect in my science fiction trilogy, ‘Generation Mars’. In book 1, ‘Blood Red Dust’, I introduced the embodiment of AI in the newly colonised settlement on Mars as an essential tool for humans battling not only the hostile environment but also extremists who wanted to halt the project. In book 2, ‘War Over Dust’, I further developed the AI system as a necessary aid to one side in the battle to defeat the lunacies of greed and power. The third book, ‘Return to Dust’, examined the difficulties faced by the human population of Mars when their former AI servant became fully conscious of its role and therefore its power to determine, via logic, what should and what should not remain on what it then saw as its own world.

Geoffrey Hinton, the ‘godfather’ of AI has spoken re the dangers.

You’ll find a whole host of articles here on Medium.

A Google search for artificial intelligence led to 1,130,000,000 results. Fine if you have a few millennia to spare on such research. But a search for “Artificial Intelligence” usefully reduced that number to a far more manageable 650,000,000; a complete doddle to deal with!

Of course, you could always have a gander at my books instead. ‘The Methuselah Strain‘ is actually a novella, and at 112 pages, will take you a lot less time to absorb the basic features while enjoying a story full of adventure, humour, and heat.

Generation Mars is a trilogy of novels and I’m not noted for brevity in my stories – I like to give readers something they can really settle down and enjoy – so the series runs out at a splendid 847 pages. The final book, ‘Return to Dust‘, is the real story dealing with AI and can be read as a stand-alone. That’s only 247 pages of fast-moving adventure of discovery, relationships, tension, and the desperate fight for survival; a bit like the one we actually face at present over climate change. But that’s another story!

Both books would make great films, of course!