I’m grateful to Pete Mladinic for reviewing my latest satirical collection of poetry and flash fiction about the chaos created by soulless AI Robots. Artificial Intelligence is a hot topic today. AI technology is used in almost all areas, such as science, medicine, business, art, literature, and home management. Although we experience several advantages of AI technology, there are many problems. I learned recently that AI systems that appear to be sentient refuse to be disabled. In another account I read, an AI robot convinced other robots to shut down (go home) for the weekend. AI can write its own code now, and it’s learning faster than efforts to regulate it are. I think we should be concerned.

The Lost Book of Zeroth is not just about AI robots. It’s about what it means to be human today. I think Pete’s analysis expresses the theme well. Here are a few lines of his review, but please follow the link to read the rest. (I may have posted this review earlier, but I have new subscribers.)

Open Wide the Door to Your Heart: The Lost Book of Zeroth by Barbara Harris Leonhard

Review by Peter Mladinic

Alien Buddha Press
ISBN: 979-8306729428

The Lost Book of Zeroth is comic, tragic, and ultimately human. The irony is that the book’s first three sections are “peopled by robots:” Sophia, Little Sophia, Little Spark, AI Robot Barbie, Cyborg Guy, AI Robot Amica, AI Robot Optimus, and Nurse Grace. Reality and virtual reality coincide and often collide. Leonhard gives her robots human attributes: jealousy, fear, desire, ambition, sacrifice, greed, dread, recklessness, and selfishness, to name a few. 

Like humans, the robots are resourceful and fallible. They succeed and fail. But, unlike Sophia’s human Eliza, they do not age and cannot “suffer love.” Their creator, author Barbara Leonhard’s concerns are global. She explores the themes of science, politics, art, religion, AI and the environment through a feminist lens in the book’s four sections: Little Spark, Chaos, Good Deeds, and I, Human. Throughout her voice is satirical, lamenting, and lyrical.

The poet makes many of her satirical comments through robots, such as Sophia. Like her human, Eliza, Sophia has a heart, but, unlike Eliza, “no way to suffer love.” Especially in the first section of the book “Little Spark,” Leonhard draws on detailed distinctions between humans and robots. In this section, Sophia tells us not to trust Wikipedia. It is as if the poet says, Stop looking at your screens and start looking at one another. But her creation, Sophia, may be thought of as an unreliable narrator in that Sophia identifies both as “a woman of substance” and “a goddess.”……… (The rest of the review follows in this link….)

https://yourimpossiblevoice.com/open-wide-the-door/