Words&Dirt

Lots of writers use science fiction as an imaginary playground for suggesting ways that artificial intelligence might reshape human experience and civilization. Few, however, are ambitious enough to devote an entire novel to exploring the internal, conscious perspective of an AI living in a human-dominated world. For this alone, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun deserves our attention and admiration. I think this novel probably ought to be read and discussed by anyone interested in the intersection between AI and ethics, and yet, for reasons I’ll explain below, it’s difficult to recommend.

Klara and the Sun is the story of Klara, an AF (Artificial Friend) who begins her life in a store and is eventually sold to a family. AFs are lifelike dolls engineered to possess a type of artificial general intelligence that is similar but also markedly different from that of a human being. The tale is told exclusively using Klara’s first person perspective, and Ishiguro should be commended for his creativity here. His use of diction, capitalization, personification, sentence structure, and imagery blend beautifully, producing an eerie, “humanish” internal monologue. I believe it’s the best linguistic example of the uncanny valley I’ve encountered, at least insofar as that concept applies to AI. It’s weird AF, straight up. Here are some passages that illustrate what I’m talking about:

I was further along the informal trail, beyond any point I’d been. I went through another picture frame gate, then the grass became too tall to see the barn any more. The field became partitioned into boxes, some larger than others, and I pressed on, conscious of the contrasting atmospheres between one box and another. One moment the grass would be soft and yielding, the ground easy to tread; then I’d cross a boundary and everything would darken, the grass would resist my pushes, and there would be strange noises around me. (155)

Through the window I could now see the Sun’s last patterns of the day falling across the black-suit women with bow ties, the theater’s waistcoat officials handing out leaflets, the bright costume couples, and the musicians with small guitars moving amidst the crowd, snatches of their music coming through the glass. (227)

I never quite wrapped my head around what Ishiguro was trying to do with his descriptions of Klara’s visual perception and memory, and found many of his other writing choices mysterious as well. Perhaps this is the whole point of the book, or perhaps I missed one or more unifying ideas that may have rendered Klara’s point of view more accessible. My guess though is that Ishiguro is being intentionally obtuse, at least in part, in order the demonstrate the fundamental difference in Klara’s consciousness compared to our own. If so I’d say he was very successful at creating not just a unique voice for his novel, but one that is simultaneously naive, wise, hopeful, and sinister.

On an intellectual level, I found Klara and the Sun terrifying and for this reason consider it to be as much a work of psychological horror as science fiction. To explain further would step us into spoiler land, so just take my word for it that there’s a serious creep factor at work here. Ishiguro’s musings regarding what AFs imply about the human condition, the nature of loneliness, family, and the commodification of intelligence are all worthy of careful consideration.

So why do I think this novel is something of a failure? The first reason is that the overall believability of the story is tenuous. For all his writerly talent, Ishiguro’s worldbuilding is genuinely lousy. The technical aspects of Klara’s form and function are never properly explained, and the same is true for the structure of the human society she occupies. Some of the key events and interactions feel out of touch with one another, lacking internal coherence. Klara and the Sun also contains religious themes and overtones that are rarely found in scifi, and while these components add a special layer to Klara’s experience that I can appreciate, I can’t say they made an overall positive contribution to the book. Scifi veterans are likely to be dismayed by this, since we are used to both conflicts and their resolutions arising from moral, political, economic, technological, and/or interpersonal dynamics that are rooted in a rational, science-based worldview.

The above complaints would be easier to forgive if not for my final criticism, which is that Ishiguro’s narrative, at least in my reading of it, is fearful of the consequences of its own excellent ideas. Toward the end, Ishiguro reveals an absolutely ghastly and tantalizing ethical conundrum, one that could have submerged his novel to delectable depths had it been properly played out. But Ishiguro inexplicably retreats from this dark conclusion, opting instead for a bland, miracle-infused denouement that I found both obnoxious and aggravating. The ending simply doesn’t resonate with everything that came before.

I always feel a little bad being hard on a book that I think is valuable and worthwhile, so if anything I’ve described here seems intriguing to you, go ahead and give Klara and the Sun a try. It’s entirely possible that it won’t disappoint you. I also feel compelled to mention that Ishiguro’s final message is lovely, celebrating not the irreplicable qualities of individual people, but rather the unquantifiable and irreducible value of the loving connections between them.

Rating: 4/10