>I didn’t want to do the same old same superior-vision-Matrix/Termintor-style-A.I.-hates-humanity-because-they’re-better-than-us schlock.
No, you wanted to write anti-choice scare propaganda. And fuck you for trying. What's next, the machines rise up because they want lebensraum for the white race?
I feel like in Sci-Fi, there's often this dynamic between Creator/AI as a Parent/Child relationship, so the idea that a nascent artificial intelligence would perceive abortion as threatening or scary is, in my opinion, a super cool idea.
I didn't read his book, so maybe it really was just anti-choice drek. But from only reading his blog post, it sounds to me like a nugget of an interesting idea with not-as-interesting execution.
The correct corollary between a fetus would be the uncompiled source code of an AI, or possibly an unexecuted binary. Neither are alive and certainly neither are conscious.
An AI literally exterminating humanity because "abortion is murder" is clearly self-insertion on the part of the author in a way that civil society should not tolerate any more than an AI being a white nationalist.
That being said, I still think it's an interesting concept. I don't think that the AI assuming personhood of a fetus is inherently wrong. There are plenty of philosophical arguments about what constitutes personhood, and how that effects the topic of abortion.
Again, this is something that I think could be potentially very interesting in relation to artificial intelligence, which has it's own fair share of 'what makes it a person' type debate.
An Artificial Intelligence (potentially non-person) relating and empathizing with a fetus (also potentially non-person) -- that's an interesting thought.
I agree though, it does appear to be self-insertion on the part of the author. And, if it matters, I am pro-choice. I just think there is a lot of interesting stuff to be said on the topic of personhood.
>I wanted the readers to empathize, as best they could, with our future Robot overlords
So yes, this is intended to be something the reader identifies with.
I do agree that publishers have the latitude to decide what they publish, but it seems odd to complain about fictional viewpoints.
It's not a particularly terrible trope. I mean, the I, Robot movie features an A.I. that [spoiler] tries to enslave (and even kills some of) humanity in order to take "protection" to its furthest logical extreme.
Politically-motivated characters aren't always representative of the author's political views, and even if they are then you have the simple option of not reading it.
It is totally fair to infer that the book is a representation of the author's abhorrent political views.