Klara and the Sun

UNDER CONSIDERATION; UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Ishiguro, Kazuo. Klara and the Sun. UK: Faber and Faber / USA: Alfred A. Knopf, 2021.

Opening paragraph of Wikipedia entry:

The novel is set in a dystopian future in which some children are genetically-engineered ("lifted") for enhanced academic ability. As schooling is provided entirely at home by on-screen tutors, opportunities for socialization are limited and parents who can afford it often buy their children androids as companions. The book is narrated by one such Artificial Friend (AF) called Klara. Although exceptionally intelligent and observant, Klara's knowledge of the world is limited.[1]

That knowledge is very limited but increases, if in an odd but endearing manner. Note sentimental education as a literary theme in the history of the English novel; more specifically for our context, cf. and contrast Roderick, Or the Education of a Young Machine and A.I. and its source in Brian Aldiss's "Supertoys Last All Summer Long."

Widely reviewed, including

"A Humanoid Who Cares For Humans, From the Mind of Kazuo Ishiguro" by Radhika Jones in the New York Times 23 Feb. and 1 March 2021;[2]

"The Radiant Inner Life of a Robot: Kazuo Ishiguro returns to masters and servants with a story of love between a machine and the girl she belongs to" by Judith Shulevitz, The Atlantic April 2021;[3]

"Kazuo Ishiguro’s Deceptively Simple Story of AI" by Rumaan Alam in The New Republic 12 April 12 2021.

Shulevitz fudges on genre but comments directly on the novel's technological context:

I guess you could call this novel science fiction. It certainly makes a contribution to the centuries-old disputation over whether machines have the potential to feel. This debate has picked up speed as the artificially intelligent agents built by actual engineers close in on the ones made up by writers and TV, film, and theater directors, the latest round in the game of tag between science and science fiction that has been going on at least since Frankenstein. Klara is Alexa, super-enhanced. She’s the product that roboticists in a field called affective computing (also known as artificial emotional intelligence) have spent the past two decades trying to invent. [...]

What makes Klara an imaginary entity [...] is that her feelings are not simulated. They’re real. We know this because she experiences pathos, a quality still seemingly impervious to computational analysis — although as a naive young robot, she does have to break it down before she can understand it.

For machine feeling, cf. and contrast death (sic)[4] of HAL 9000 in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (film), where the "feel" issue is explicit.

RDE, finishing, 8May21, with thanks to David Stevens