Greg Egan's Diaspora starts with the details of what it's like for a new AI to be brought into existence in a society of advanced AIs, and jumps off from there. Definitely one of the more original hard sci-fi novels I've read.
However, I regard him as a bad writer, as his dialogue is very bad, his characters hollow and his plot progression is rather jumpy.
Read him for his stimulating ideas, but not the way he tells the story.
Nonetheless, I think the result is extraordinary, because the problems posed, the paradoxes highlighted, and some brilliant insights, are new and valid outside the fictional world created in the novel.