5Luciana Franco 5.021.

743-9
Melissa Biardo 3.571.511-9
Guzman Pineiro 5.358.095-0
Federica Magallanes 5.071.002-9

THE SHARK
Introduction
Dave Eggers. This new piece of writing portrays ethical dilemmas about what is right and
wrong in a reality where AI is state of the art. Therefore, this defies us to reflect on our
morality and how new technologies such as the preceding one afflict it through
dehumanization. This concept of dehumanization is valuable as it is explored deeply, taking
into account the limits that technology has crossed, and so it reflects in our modern society.
This sequel links to the concept of dehumanization explored in The Circle. It expands on it,
emphasizing how AI has the potential to reduce the human experience to concrete events or
preferences and to take away the dignity of people's lives and deaths. The name “The
Shark” comes from the shark that, in the previous novel, served as a metaphor for The
Circle’s ravenous ambition, that devoured everything in its way.
Plot synopsis
The novel will continue the idea presented by The Circle, mainly related to the lack of privacy
people worldwide have due to the overexposure of their lives online. Within the plot, Annie
presents a revolutionary project involving AI technology that unleashes the hate of the
citizens, including Mae. As the plot progresses, new characters appear, revealing all the
flaws of The Circle, claiming justice and solutions to their problems. This new character will
be Mae's key ally in quarreling against The Circle.
Main events
The ensuing sequel begins with Annie recovering from the coma. She wants it to be secret,
yet The Circle has cams around the hospital and reveals it. Sometime later, Annie presents a
project to compensate for Mercer's death. The Circle accepts the project and starts creating
a replica of Mercer using AI. Mae attends the meeting and pretends to be excited about
having her old boyfriend back to life. When the project became public, people started to
complain about adversities they had had, and The Circle did not deal with them as they did
with Mercer's situation. After all of the criticism, Annie feels pressured, and, adding all of the
anxiety from the previous book events; she decides to leave the project.
Due to the horrible consequences of the Circle actions, the government finds itself pressured
to implement a new policy of having two hours offline. Mae takes advantage of this time
offline and investigates relevant cases to reveal the unfairness of The Circle. She finds a
person, Terry, who is willing to help her hack into The Circle and get the shady elements of
the company out to the public. Terry endured a harsh experience in which The Circle leaked
traumatic events in his life by creating a documentary in order to gain viewers and generate
attention. Mae and Terry work together and find the poll of emails and messages which The
Circle has been deleting and concealing to erase any trace of tragedies/mishaps arising from
The Circle's influence. There is tension; they are almost caught. They decide to risk it once
again and discover covered elements about the founders' history and the different
headquarters around the globe. After encountering the information, Mae and Terry go public
with them, making use of a mega virus. The Circle collapses and shuts down the servers to
end the spread of inconvenient information.
Regarding significant connections and references to the original novel, the fact that Annie
wakes up from the coma complements the existing novel. Mercer's replica is created from
this crucial event that builds upon the previous story. Moreover, this is the fundamental
common thread that runs the sequel. Not to mention the fact that the tech company, The
Circle, takes technology from the preceding novel to another level in this sequel, as is the
case of AI.
Characters development
Mae continues to be the main character. She is still aligned with The Circle's aims, and her
malleable personality subsists. What The Circle pretends to do with AI and Terry's input on
The Circle's wrongdoings are the elements that trigger a response in her: they are change
agents. They lead her to be more skeptical about The Circle's actions, developing a critical
way of thinking that departs from her original self. Ultimately, she becomes one of the forces
that bring down the organization. In sum, Mae's character arch portrays a transformation
from ally to enemy.
Tom Stenton remains one of the wise men. As in the original novel, he is aggressive and in
charge of making the company economically viable. He does not change during the sequel
and sustains his views from the original novel about privacy, control, and innovation.
Eamon Bailey reappears in the sequel as one of the wise men as Tom does. He maintains
his socially upstanding personality. Throughout the novel, there is no perceivable
transformation. He continues to be a capitalist icon not really interested in the ideals of The
Circle.
In this sequel, there is controversy over the fact that the previously mentioned who
supported the idea that secrets were lies have loads of hidden secrets about their private
lives. That contradicts the motto of the company, The Circle.
Terry, a new character, appears as a solution to Mae's conflict with The Circle. The role he
will play is crucial. His part is full of anger and resentment, seeking personal revenge.
However, after finding all the damage The Circle has caused, he decides to fight for justice.
He aligns with the character of Ty, trying to bring The Circle down in a discrete and clever
way.
Themes and Messages
The themes to be explored are dehumanization, portraying a human as a couple of events
and preferences, and trying to replace a human life with a machine that simulates being the
person who is gone.
This sequel expands on the idea that a human cannot be limited to an array of data collected
from a specific source, as it is dehumanizing. Mae saw this happen to her when the LuvLuv
presentation happened, and her entire personality was reduced to a compilation of her life
preferences, dislikes, and events. She felt that it was all disconnected and did not represent
her at all as a human being. Similarly, Terry felt that the entire world started to see him as a
certain kind of person with a series of traits, and started to label his actions and choices,
basing themselves just on random facts about him and a string of disjoint events that the AI
did not even adequately present in charge of making the documentary.
What is more, it delves into the ethical dilemma of trying to replace a person who has died
with an artificial intelligence produced to simulate the deceased's behavior. This fact finds
current relevance in what is known as "grief bots:" "chatbots created to simulate a
conversation with someone who has passed" (Prakash, 2023). This "grief bot" is similar to
The Circle's attempt to simulate Mercer's personality through an AI program that analyzes
data left on his Zing chats, information that they attain through interviewing his friends, like
Mae, and videos from SeeChange cameras that captured some of his behavior. This does
not respect his memory and makes his life part of a twisted experiment.

Links

https://www.hindustantimes.com/technology/what-are-griefbots-ai-powered-programmes-use
d-to-resurrect-the-dead-101684647671101.html