We Read a Book About an "Artificial Friend" and Discuss AI

 Linda liked Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro better after the first half.

Carla – Why was Klara chosen? 

Marcia et al – Because Josie had a lot of illness, her parents were afraid she would die and wanted Klara to replace her with a simulacrum if she did die.

Ken liked the reader being Klara on the audiobook.

Linda liked that Klara was objective and not very emotional. Linda noted that Klara was learning about emotions and wasn’t snippy about it.

Ken – Klara personified the sun! Why – ?

Marcia – Because Klara was battery-operated. (She probably had a solar-powered battery.) Maybe by being around humans , she wanted to be more like humans.

Carla & Claudia –The Sun was source of life.

Ken – Are all people humans, and are all humans people? Is a pet cat a human? They are missed like a person when gone.

Carla/Linda – Are they humanity?

Linda – Put a lot of love into a toy doll, you get love from it.

The Klara Robot would become Josie if Josie died.  Carla – would the robot become more and more like Josie?

Klara preserved Josie’s role and was learning more and more.

Carla – Klara was becoming more human but took everything at face value.

Marcia – She was living in the “here and now.”

Carla – No one has to pay an AI the way you’d pay a person who does those activities.

Ken - Artificial Intelligence is not real.

Carla – Transferring money with a bot.  The transfer might not be completed because the robot isn’t doing the work.

Marcia – Asking an AI if It’s human – it laughed (wasn’t an AI)

Kootings machine – Lydia – it was supposed to pollute and also save Josie

Hard to understand exactly what the Kootings machine was all about.

Marcia – Programming a baby; problem is that bad people can make a type of kid (who might be bad for society).

Ken - Someone could create a Nazi type.

Marcia – “Lifted” kids could get grave illnesses.

Ken – If a child was not lifted, they were not likely to be able to get into good schools.

Linda – In the story, the current generation of parents were able to have their kids lifted so they would have a higher IQ.

AI would take over everything.

There would be the poor and the rich and that’s it.

Ken – People in the story tended to think there was something special inside, but it was not really in Josie but among those who loved her.

Carla – Klara replacing Josie would not have worked, because it was the love in others for Josie that was important.

Ken – Does/will AI enhance our relationships or not?

Carla – At the end of the story, someone wanted to take Klara apart and examine her black box. Robots are replacing people.

At the end of the story, Klara was sitting and just remembering, in a junkyard.

Linda – Old phones & iPads might have private information on them, (e.g., passwords), that someone could find.

Linda – What happens when lifted kids grow up and know their parents are not as smart as them?  If unlifted children are treated with scorn, why aren’t their parents and old people treated that way?

Carla – Workers are being hired, and then they quit. They just can’t handle the work. There are people out there who would like to work but can’t get jobs.

Linda – Some businesses don’t want to hire graduates from Ivy League colleges, because those students tend to act like they are "entitled."

Cindy’s daughter went to an Ivy League college and works hard.

Claudia went to an Ivy League college and worked hard at jobs.

Marcia – AOL means you’re old. Two spaces between sentences means you’re old, so AI will screen you out of the competition for some jobs.

Linda – You can buy a refrigerator that generates a shopping list.

Cindy – AI helps figure out to avoid having to do pesky little tasks.

Ken – A downside is that it’s using a mix of what was rather than what will be…like Stepford wives!

Marcia – Robots can look like dogs and can shoot you…drones!

Lydia – Many elderly people in Japan have robot dogs to play with and to cheer them up.

Joyce emailed a comment about the book: “I enjoyed the book very much and thought that it was incredibly timely with the current discussion of AI.”