IndieReader

IndieReader Approved - 4.2 Stars

What begins with hope for a healthcare revolution leads to an AI orchestrating the lives, and deaths, of human beings.

Promethean Systems looks like your standard tech startup: having begun with the laudable intent of using AI tools to detect medical conditions and recommend interventions as early as possible, it’s struggling with money and morale. When developer and cofounder Daniel writes some new code so their AI can push through limitations on its processing power, it’s only one short-term crisis averted. That code, however, plants the seeds of a greater crisis—one that puts the company, Daniel’s family, and the world’s stability at risk.

J.L. Spears’s DAEMON PROTOCOL isn’t inherently breaking new ground. Despite the timeliness of warnings about AI, the “AI run amok” genre goes back decades, and most readers will be familiar with the central conceit of an AI “interpreting” a seemingly banal directive to unexpected and dangerous ends. But DAEMON PROTOCOL does a good job of updating those classic tropes, giving the text a thoroughly modern feel. Classic sci-fi was often influenced and inflected by the Cold War; this story, however, is positioned within the market of technocratic Silicon Valley. The danger isn’t national security or nuclear obliteration: it’s short-sighted investors who are greedy to turn a profit and willing to ignore the warning signs as long as the money keeps rolling in. It’s also in well-meaning entrepreneurs who are forced to betray their ideals and their better judgement to appease those short-sighted investors. The text excellently portrays how critical scientific progress is often hampered by the demands of capitalism, down to the mismanagement of talent and the vagaries of start-up funding.

This plays well because DAEMON PROTOCOL is reassuringly smart, showing experience and understanding of the tech landscape. This shows up in the shape of the plot, for one: a major portion of the story is given over to the development of quantum computing hardware, as seemingly unstoppable AI tools still need concrete resources to function at higher levels. Significantly, this book is also about smart people making the best decisions they can. The text is deliberate and successful about inviting readers in with simple explanations of complicated ideas, be they quantum computing, the Knapsack problem, or global logistics chains. The prose isn’t the point here, but aside from being clear and precise, it dips occasionally into evocative beauty: one career hacker prefers “to move in and out of businesses like a snake slinking into a walled garden;” a compatriot hunches over his laptop in deep focus “like a bear over a stream.” All of this combines into a crisp, readable text.

DAEMON PROTOCOL might still benefit from some final high-level editing, especially where it briefly loses focus in the middle by swinging around to a romance subplot that doesn’t pay off. There’s also the baffling question of what the eponymous “Daemon Protocol” is, since the words don’t appear in the text itself. Overall, though, the story is compelling, the narrative voice is confident, and the lessons are crucial as more and more companies try to dominate a new market sector without fully understanding what they’re doing.

J.L. Spears’s DAEMON PROTOCOL is a smart, fun, and timely warning about the unintended consequences of reckless AI development.

~ Dan Accardi for IndieReader