Bruce Holsinger

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Set at a summer rental on the Chesapeake Bay, a riveting family drama about moral responsibility in the age of artificial intelligence, from the bestselling author of the “wise and addictive” (New York Times) The Gifted School.

When the Cassidy-Shaws’ autonomous minivan collides with an oncoming car, seventeen-year-old Charlie is in the driver’s seat, with his father, Noah, riding shotgun. In the back seat, tweens Alice and Izzy are on their show more phones, while their mother, Lorelei, a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence, is absorbed in her work. Yet each family member harbors a secret, implicating them each in the accident.

During a weeklong recuperation on the Chesapeake Bay, the family confronts the excruciating moral dilemmas triggered by the crash. Noah tries to hold the family together as a seemingly routine police investigation jeopardizes Charlie’s future. Alice and Izzy turn strangely furtive. And Lorelei’s odd behavior tugs at Noah’s suspicions that there is a darker truth behind the incident—suspicions heightened by the sudden intrusion of Daniel Monet, a tech mogul whose mysterious history with Lorelei hints at betrayal. When Charlie falls for Monet’s teenaged daughter, the stakes are raised even higher in this propulsive family drama that is also a fascinating exploration of the moral responsibility and ethical consequences of AI.

Culpability explores a world newly shaped by chatbots, autonomous cars, drones, and other nonhuman forces in ways that are thrilling, challenging, and unimaginably provocative.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I am not used to this plot twist. The consequences of a fatal car crash? How many times...the crash was caused by AI doing the driving? *sits bolt upright*

That by itself gets my undivided attention. Of course you'd expect something more complex in the way of complications to sustain a novel-length story. You get it in the form of many, many questions, many...let's call them "obfuscations" by people who should know better, and many evil-intent lies told by scumbags.

It really is a novel of the moment. It's not a nonce book, though it has trappings still new to our culturally changed time. The real, deeper exploration is, as we're ever and always confronted with, how far will you go to protect someone you love? That is an evergreen plot because there is no one answer, no one way to think about your own answer, and a never-ending carnival of reasons the question keeps needing an answer.

Tragedy strikes an ordinary family somewhere every minute of every day. When the world is in the midst of an upheaval like the ever-increasing dominance of AI...which doesn't exist, it's really just a handy term for "data-mining executive algorithms" or some less punchy way of saying "fast, fancy databases"...the question of culpability (and Culpability) is a great way to interrogate personal responsibility. It's always worth interrogating. The parents who broke the rules and trusted AI to backstop them? Culpable. The kid who was, well, a bog-standard overconfident kid? Culpable. The vile scum who unleashed an ill-considered AI tool on the world without effective controls?

Do I even need to type it?

It was a very effective choice, making the mother an AI researcher; it left us without a clean shot at our tech-billionaire villain. (Wouldn't matter to me if he was the kindest, most fleecy-li'l-lambkin of a good guy; anyone involved in this AI nightmare of surveillance and control, with corporations acting as the Stasi, the KGB, and the CIA rolled into one, is guilty of something far worse than mere negligence.) The author's made it impossible to assign all blame in only one place. That means we're all left to think through who owes what to whom, in guilt terms; what happens as a result of our decisions is the root of all family relationships. This family's in crisis, but the way they got there? That started a long time ago.

Really back when these two Millennial solipsists had children; nay, when they hooked up the first time. No one seems to like anyone else in the autonomous van that wrecked; no one seems to know why anyone else feels the way they do; the parents are aware of their kids as entities but don't seem to understand why they're acting the way they are. In many ways, I got the impression that Author Holsinger was using the AI-aided disaster to interrogate whether the family in the van is a family at all. Are they in any fundamentally-human way related, or are they merely biologically similar in statistically significant degrees? The AI plot, then, is both point and pointed; we're asked to think about consequences, and should not stop at the simplest ones.

It's a story familiar in its outlines and so makes that deeper probing far clearer in purpose and execution. Because I've read a zillion family-in-crisis tales, that fact of defending your young was just expected and unsurprising. The last half of the story, after the consequences were pretty much on the table, was where I engaged my deeper reading skills. We're led to contemplate, and to contextualize, love and guilt and privilege and responsibility as a nexus; if you could do that without applying it, and its results, to yourself, I think you're deluded.

It is obvious Culpability was a carefully selected title. Guilt and responsibility twined like snakes around each other, and around duty and obligation. These are topics readers love in their stories because they are truly universal. The ending of this story is not going to please everyone. It is absolutely the best ending to my thinking, because it foregrounds the single greatest weakness of trusting, as in "with your life," A System:

Humans are chaotic, and no system will ever manage chaos. show less

Noah Cassidy, a father of three, narrates much of this family story with a very modern twist. Noah was sitting in the front passenger seat next to his 17-year-old son, Charlie, when an accident killed two people in another car. The rest of his immediate family, his wife Lorelei Shaw, and his two daughters, Alice and Izzy, were in the back seat when the accident occurred. Each family member sustained some injuries, and they all experienced emotional turmoil. Of course, this tragic event was show more difficult for everyone, but complicating the investigation and healing after the accident is the fact that the car Charlie was driving had advanced artificial intelligence (AI) features. There are questions about whether Charlie overrode the AI and who or what was truly to blame for the death of two people. Can AI be culpable?

Holsinger allows us to get to know each family member through the stories the father tells and other documents. For instance, we know that Lorelei is a world-renowned AI ethics expert who has published extensively on the topic. Excerpts from her book, Silicon Souls: On the Culpability of Artificial Minds, are interspersed throughout the novel, helping us understand the moral aspects of AI, related to the family's car and the accident, as well as broader issues with AI. We also read the text dialogue between young Alice and a chatbot. By piecing the stories together, the reader wonders how each family member experiences culpability.

Noah and Lorelei's marital dynamics and the sibling rivalry among their children give us pause as we try to figure out how the plot will resolve. There are secrets in this family: between husband and wife, among the children, and between the children and parents. The magnitude of the secrets becomes more apparent as the story progresses and the tension builds regarding the police investigation of the accident and the variables at play.

Family members express myriad emotions during a stay in a vacation rental, especially when they interact with a wealthy family, headed by widower Daniel Monet, who owns a large compound near the property. Charlie begins spending time with Monet's daughter, Eurydice. Charlie acts cavalier while his father worries about who will be arrested, and then the two families' paths cross in confusing ways. It becomes evident that Lorelei knows more about Daniel Monet than her family realizes. As the relationships unravel, the story becomes compelling in its exploration of business, research, and modern corporations.

Many plot events are relatable and surround the novel's main moral and ethical question. Who is culpable for the accident? Can AI be blamed? Does AI have the capacity to save human life? What does parenting look like in the age of AI? How do we negotiate responsibility if we allow AI to make decisions for us? Do people of higher status have different responsibilities in modern society? How do we understand the complexities of technological dependence? Although complex questions arise throughout the novel, it is easy to read and understandable for the most casual reader. show less

A family of five, with the seventeen year old son driving, is involved in an accident, which kills two people in another vehicle. The family decides to recover and reflect on this calamitous event by renting a summer house on Chesapeake Bay. There they struggle with the moral dilemmas sparked by the crash, throwing this family in turmoil. A troubling look at “culpability” in the age of artificial intelligence. The writing and character-building is first rate. A perfect introduction to show more Holsinger for me. I will be reading more of his work. show less

This is an insightful examination of the dangers of unchecked AI wrapped in an engaging story. Holsinger masterfully paces his twisty plot while maintaining tension throughout. His characterizations are nuanced, especially Noah, who narrates with a great deal of humility, humanity and understanding. Holsinger avoids being overly didactic or excessively fearful. Yet he sounds a clear warning. The benefits of AI are clearly seductive but they need to include consideration of the traits we show more recognize as human. show less