Review: Not even the three laws of robotics will stop this computer
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 1, 2013
Iain Clements takes on the concept artificial intelligence from the perspective of a hacker and an information technology specialist. The IT woman works at a too-big-to-fail bank and ends up heading a team that creates a super computer program. At first the program does what it's told, taking big data, crunching it and determining who to lend to and who not to lend to. Simple right? Hardly. Kate has created the first step toward Isaac Asimov's robot mind, without the Three Laws. Her creation learns to think for itself when hacker James joins in, seeding a rogue program into its memory banks and giving the system a personality reboot. The story's short and the bad guys are real bumblers. It's got some errors, but the plot moves along rather quickly. Clements is a Brit so expect some spellings not accepted by The Associated Press. I liked that bit.