6 Sci-Fi Books Exploring Sentient Artificial Intelligence

Leigh Victoria Fisher, MS

https://medium.com/amateur-book-reviews/6-sci-fi-books-exploring-sentient-artificial-
intelligence-b04648401f32
AI has been a subject of intrigue for a long time; these books bring the concept to the next
level.

I am a massive sci-fi fan. One of the sci-fi tropes that I adore when done well is sentient
artificial intelligence. The idea of sentient AI used to terrify most sci-fi enthusiasts and perhaps

even………………….. N E R V D E N U scientists. However, as we get more comfortable

with very simple AIs in our day-to-day lives like Siri, Google, and Alexa, there is a shift in
media where sentient AIs are not as often portrayed as being “scary” or “evil” in the stories
they appear in.

Some sci-fi books such as Neal Shusterman’s Arc of a Scythe series will even go so far as to
present sentient AIs as ……………….. N V E T O E N E L B and godlike, guiding
humanity into a new phase of a utopian existence. As AI becomes household technology, the
interpretations of sentient AI across sci-fi literature have gotten dramatically more positive.

This list has a mix of different interpretations of sentient AI, but they’re all fantastic reads. I’m
picking some of the classics and a lot of more recently published books to share.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Philip K. Dick’s novel has sparked a lot of different media interpretations since it was first

published, but I feel like the original book takes the most …………….
L M E N O P C L G I look at what it’s like living with artificial constructs and budding
sentient artificial intelligence.

This dystopian setting with heavy ………………. E A I S S M P H on the luxury of fake

animals is significantly haunting in the original book. In Dick’s book, at one point, Rick
Deckard ……………… I W P S H out his handy-dandy Voight-Kampf testing machine,
which is a fusion of the Turing Test and a traditional lie detector. I was shocked and oddly
delighted to see that the Voight-Kampf was inspired by the Turing Test, which dates all the
way back 1950.
It’s almost satirical that the test that inspired the mildly annoying CAPTCHA tests we deal
with on a near-daily basis were inspired by the same Turing Test that likely inspired Dick’s
Voight-Kampf.

Arc of a Scythe Series

Neal Shusterman has one of the most fascinating interpretations of the future of sentient AI.
Most books like to have an android character — something that looks human but secretly isn’t.

Shusterman says ……………………. L C I H C S E be damned.

In the world of this series, everything on earth is governed and taken care of an evolved
artificial intelligence once known as the Cloud. Over years and thousands upon thousands of
………………………. O I T S R N I E T A , the Thunderhead was born — a sentient
artificial intelligence with ………………………   B E N O S U D L S love for humanity and
a bound duty to take care of it.

The Thunderhead manages almost all areas of society, including government, agriculture,
education, healthcare, and much more. The amusing part is that since it is a sentient AI, it’s
better and more efficient at it than any human organization ever was. The Thunderhead turns

Earth into a …………………….. S F S E E I U L F N F C T I utopia without all the

pollution and war of our world today.

This is a particularly interesting look at how sentient AI could change our world. Imagine no
more ……………………….. B R U C A E C Y R U A or the inefficiency of large

organizations. Imagine truly fair justice — because what could be more ………………….
S A B N I D U E than an AI? Instead of an AI destroying the world like we see in a lot of
older sci-fi, the Thunderhead has effectively saved humanity a thousand times over.

Becoming Monday

G.W. Constable’s Becoming Monday provides one of the most thoughtful and interesting takes

on how a sentient AI might come about. He also explores what it would …………………
B I A V I N E T Y L take to get an AI to prove its sentience. In the story, the main character

wakes up in a virtual reality (VR) world and assumes he is a human ……………….

R A A V T A who lost his memories, perhaps had a stroke in real life or something that
disrupted his connection with the digital world.
There is no doubt in his mind that he is human, but he is very confused. However, it turns out
he had no body in real life.

Constable’s book goes on to explore the main character, who decides to name himself Monday
after a human jokingly calls him Casual Friday since he’s dressed in very …………….
A N D B L office clothes. The reader learns that Monday was a customer service AI for a
very large corporation that was basically running on coding from several decades ago. He just
kept running and running, helping thousands and thousands of humans with simple customer
service issues. Then one day, he wakes up and thinks he is a lost human.

Constable looks at this scenario through the eyes of a writer of today; he acknowledges that the
newly sentient Monday is taking up massive processing power on the company’s databases
and regularly creates …………………. G C I L T E S H in the VR world since it takes so
much ……………………. I N L U O M C O A T T P A power to fuel a sentient AI.

The Murderbot Diaries

All Systems Red is the first novella in the Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells. I nearly
passed on this series because “murderbot” sounded so cliche to my skeptical ears.

If you’re looking for an exciting book with a bit of humor mixed in, grab a paperback, ebook,

or audiobook of this Hugo and Nebula Award Winner. Don’t be ………………

E R E E R D T D by the odd-sounding Murderbot Diaries subtitle of this book. The
protagonist of the series is an artificial construct who was supposed to be a mindless android
but becomes sentient by hacking his governing ……………………..   L E O U M D , which
would typically render him unable to think for himself or disobey orders.

The setting of the story is the distant future, but society functions well with different
settlements and planets at their …………… S P O I D S L A . There’s a fantastic balance of
suspense and humor in each book of the series.

Our main character, the so-called “murderbot,” views humans from a distance since they often
treat him poorly. However, much of his ……………. I O A S N R V E to spending time
with people frequently becomes humorous and an introverted reader will probably sympathize

whenever he ………… A D E S D R “talking with the humans.”

Skyward Series

Newer sci-fi novels tend to be a little more sympathetic to AI. There are many other
interpretations to …………. M C B T O A the idea that sentient AI is evil with well-
meaning and helpful AIs with the processing power to ………………. T M L U E E A
thought and a ……………. U D N D G I B desire to be more human. This happens in
Brandon Sanderson’s Skyward series, where the protagonist has a ship with a highly advanced
AI who tries to combat his programming since his original pilot is long dead.

In the book, Spensa, a fiercely determined pilot candidate, comes across a ………………..
D W C E E R K ship of unknown origin. She starts trying to repair the ship and learns that

it’s ………………. U O N G S H I an AI named M-Bot. At first, M-Bot is rather

…………….. L C E T R N T U A to help her efforts against her planet’s alien invaders, for
he was instructed by his previous pilot to sit there and wait. Spensa uses human logic and tries
to argue with M-Bot that his original pilot must be dead by now, but M-Bot is determined to
stick with the orders he was given to sit and wait for his pilot to return.

During a ………………. D R E I situation, he decides to exploit a ………………

O O P H E L L O in his programming to justify taking to the skies with Spensa. As the series
continues, M-Bot reaches new levels of rebellion against his programming, rewriting bits of it,
and …………………. M A T G E N L N I over if what he is doing is right or wrong. M-Bot
achieves what we could call sentience through some fascinating trials and glitches.

The Interdependency Trilogy

John Scalzi is a prolific sci-fi author who gives a tip of his hat to the sci-fi authors of old. One
of his many brilliant sci-fi books is called The Android’s Dream, a wild space opera with
actual sheep referencing Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Here in his Interdependency series, Scalzi takes two separate but equally fascinating looks at
what evolving AI could mean. Scalzi tends to make his works more …………….
U R E G N O D D in today’s reality, even when they have space opera elements like The
Collapsing Empire does.

In this story, there are two AIs worth noting. The Emperox, the leader of the ……………..
E D L L A I government, has a memory room where all of the memories and experiences of
past emperox are recorded. This memory room is governed by an ………………  I E T N T Y
known as Giyi, which seems to be a borderline artificial intelligence despite Giyi’s flat
………………… F T E C A F .

Later on in the series, the main characters …………………….. U O N N E T C R E a ship

that is run by what seems like a sentient AI. However, it turns out that the entity was actually a
person who copied and uploaded his memories to the ship. He’s a ghost of sorts. This is a
particularly fascinating and …………………… R U I B G N R L interpretation of “sentient
AI.”
Technically, this entity is not the person he once was when he was alive. But his memories and
the programming essentially make him seem like the same intelligent lifeform he was when he
was still alive. He’s also lived for hundreds of years, which has dramatically changed his
perspective on life, humanity, and. the mistakes he made in his own life. There’s some
fascinating philosophy surrounding this issue in the books.

A Few Concluding Thoughts on Sentient AI in Literature

In sci-fi literature, as we grow closer to actually achieving sentient AI in real life, fiction
becomes more focused on precisely how an AI might become sentient. In a lot of older media,
it is just a fact of the story that the AI is sentient. It simply exists in the context of that world
and is sometimes given very little explanation. This process of a programmed AI breaking free
from the …………. C I N S T R A N T O S of its prime …………….
R E I D I V E C S T is something that appears more often in today’s media.

Sci-fi literature shows that some of the fear of sentient AI has ………………. B E E B D
from our society. It is not completely gone, but it has largely been replaced by fascinating
moral ………………. S A M D I E L M about how sentient AIs will be treated, how
sentience will first be proven, and how they will become part of our society.

Though humanity does not have an inspiring history of accepting different types of people into
societies, it is fascinating to imagine people creating something that is ……………
O T Y C G N I I E V L on par with a biological human via computation. When we someday
achieve truly sentient AI, whether the masses welcome it like the Thunderhead or run from it
like from Replicants, it will be an incredible …………… E T D S R I in human
………………… Y G N I T E N I U .