Law & Society Blog

Cory Doctorow, writer, activist, and blogger extraordinaire, has posted the final installment of his new short story “I, Row-Boat” on Craphound. It’s about a small tourist boat with vastly overpowered computing resources, searching for reasons not to terminate its state of self-awareness and sentience in a world that humans have largely left behind. In its search for meaning, the boat delves into various theological disputes with other AIs, humans, and an uplifted, sentient reef. These conceptual pieces are hard to pull off, but Cory’s story is smart, funny, and moving, and it didn’t leave me wishing for an essay instead of a story. Another somewhat parallel story is is Visit the Sins. Here, Cory discusses the value of self-awareness to the self and to others, which makes for a very intelligent treatment of the philosophical being for others problem of selfhood and identity.

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