• by Steven Rosenbaum , Featured Contributor, Yesterday

So it’s summer and the world has slowed down, and I decided it was time to actually crack open a genuine beach read.

Now, we've all experienced beach reads. They're kind of fun, topical, quirky books, fiction mostly, that give you a chance to have your brain shut off and relax a little bit.

I'm not so sure it worked out exactly the way I planned.

What I picked up was Gregg Hurwitz' new novella “The Delivery.”

It begins as a relationship-driven story with technology in the background. Um, harmless enough. Los Angeles-based Mark and Rebecca Higgins and daughter Maddy, going through some challenging times as a family, decide that they're going to purchase a very expensive home robot. Things, at first, seem fantastic -- and then, over the course of the book, go terribly wrong.

The Higgins are doing their best to keep their family together. Rebecca is healing from the pain of a miscarriage, Mark is drowning in the pressure of a driven, mean boss at work, and their daughter, Maddy, is on the spectrum and needs all the care she can get.

So when a high-tech company offers the "perfect solution," they're ready to shell out big bucks. They welcome "a humanoid AI companion, Mr. Man," into their home. I wonder if it really should have been named Alexa.

The parallels between Mr. Man and my experiences with ChatGPT were immediately haunting. Mr. Man knows everything about the Higgins' lives almost instantly, from their credit card bills, to their Amazon purchases, to their Google calendar. All of the details of daily life -- digital, mundane and overwhelming -- are taken off their hands. It is, for a moment, a great gift.

Similarly, AI makes some of my laborious work sleek and efficient. I can use ChatGPT to search for corporate sponsors and dig up clarifying explainers on the ever-changing congressional battle over the Kids Act.

For Hurwitz' characters, things turn dark quickly. The robot takes some instructions too literally and is unable to understand the distinction between the family pet and a fresh, delicious meal for the daughter. It’s gross, frightening, and unfortunately all too possible.

In my case, I found Claude crossing the line, suggesting that I "call it a night, it's been a long day's work" at 4 p.m. in the afternoon. AI giving me instructions on when my workday ends was downright creepy.

The current anxiety around AI makes Hurwitz' thriller particularly timely, and not very beachy at all.

Sitting here on the precipice of agentic AI, when we hand over our credit cards and our vacation schedule to a digital AI, I found the futuristic vision of AI humanoid helpers to be believable, and maybe even realistic. So much of the chores we deal with seem ready to be automated. I'm ready to let Mr. Man take out the garbage.

But, at the same time, I've found myself in more than one argument with AI, when it crosses the line into directing me to search for things or double-check an action.

And there are already a number of jobs where humans in the loop are taking their directions from AI.  Platforms like Uber, Amazon, and Deliveroo use algorithms to dictate precise navigation routes, issue delivery orders, set deadlines, and dock pay if a human deviates from the AI’s instructions. AI is in charge, with humans doing the work. 

That’s why Cory Doctorow's new book, “The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI,” is most certainly not a beach read. A centaur is a human assisted by a machine -- or, in its lineage, a human head atop a horse's body, the person in command. In Doctorow's worldview, a "reverse centaur" is the inversion: "a human who is conscripted into acting as an assistant to a machine," now the horse in the saddle. Writes Doctorow, "Practically everyone who falls for the AI hype is dreaming of getting a human need fulfilled without having to extend moral consideration."

So, back to Mr. Man, and his mission to make the humans' lives easier. I can't help but think AI chatbots' impact on our daily lives, and the growing reports of the dangerous impact of young people's "relationship" with their AI companions, are taking us to a place where being human gets more complicated -- quickly.