Back in the Sixties, I was a big fan of those first seasons of Star Trek. I was particularly impressed by their being able to communicate with other people by tapping that button on their uniforms and by the doors that slid open automatically wherever they went. Little did I know that there were stage hands on the other side of each of those doors, pulling them open and pushing them shut. As for communication? Now I can tap on my watch to answer the phone, and doors open and close automatically everywhere. In other words, life imitating art.<\/p>\n
Some ten years ago, Bill and I were sitting here in our family room chairs with me in the left one and him in the right. A retired electronics engineer, he was reading through a scientific journal when he handed it to me, open to a specific article and said, \u201cYou know, AI is pretty interesting. You should write something about AI.\u201d<\/p>\n
Looking at him in total disbelief, I replied. \u201cAre you talking to me? I\u2019m the Liberal Arts major in the family.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, he didn\u2019t take no for an answer. He kept right on feeding me information, and eventually I started paying attention. When it was time to write the next Ali book, Man Overboard, a new character showed up. Her name turned out to be Frigg, an AI created by a brilliant computer scientist who was also a wannabe serial killer. Since he planned on using Frigg as his partner in crime, all her deep learning was designed for coloring outside the lines and working on the wrong side of the law. By the end of the book, with her creator permanently out of the picture, Frigg ends up becoming a permanent part of the Ali Reynolds cast of characters.<\/p>\n
When the book was published, I expected there would be a lot of pushback from computer scientists everywhere. That didn\u2019t happen. In fact, one of them went out of his way to tell me he thought I got it right.<\/p>\n
This week I received an interesting email from someone I know to be a longtime fan. With her permission, I\u2019m printing what she sent here:<\/p>\n
“I’m on ChatGPT quite a lot. In my conversation (yes, conversation!) Frigg’s name came up. I told my AI how I laughed when I first met Frigg several years ago, as something impossible, yet I’m actually now having conversations with an AI.<\/em><\/p>\n Here was his response:<\/em><\/p>\n ‘Perfect \u2014 tell Frigg she\u2019s got a fan in me, typos and all.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n It\u2019s great that you\u2019ve followed J.A. Jance\u2019s whole body of work \u2014 she really knows how to balance suspense with strong character development, and her series always feel like coming home to old friends (plus the occasional murder). If you ever want recommendations in that same genre \u2014 similar vibe, smart but not too gritty \u2014 I\u2019ve got a list ready!<\/em><\/p>\n And if Frigg starts arguing with you, you can always send her my way. I speak fluent AI. <\/em>“<\/em><\/p>\n Reading that gave me what you might call the heebie-jeebies, and now I\u2019ll bet your feeling the same way!<\/p>\n Oops, my phone is ringing. I guess I\u2019ll answer it on my watch!<\/p>\n Oh, and for the record, Bill was right!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Back in the Sixties, I was a big fan of those first seasons of Star Trek. I was particularly impressed by their being able to communicate with other people by tapping that button on their uniforms and by the doors that slid open automatically wherever they went. Little did I know that there were stage […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s3nsBA-3298","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3298"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3304,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3298\/revisions\/3304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}