I totally understand that technical curiosity! So thinking about it after the fact, I probably found you in ... comments on? or maybe the profile of? breathedout, who I definitely discovered during the Tumblr migration.
Alex + Ada I suspect falls victim to "it just didn't occur to us"—I mean, it occurred on a theoretical throwaway line level, but not as the obvious narrative to tell. It isn't a regressive narrative, but neither is it particularly bold, re: various stories we've told about sapient robots and female sapient robots and metaphors for personhood, and I feel like the low-risk handling of gender aligns with that.
I'm glad the Swirsky piece worked! Even if it didn't 100% hit the same trope-feelings discussed above; I also like counter/parallel examples for tropes. The piece quietly blew me away; I feel like it can be hard to walk the metaphorical/speculative line in AI stories, where you're not just writing a parallel for real-world social interactions but also looking at how a robot would work & why, but this one did both parts well. It's a great look at what you hit on, on "coping with the consequences of letting people love you the way they want or need to," while also having a sincerely convincing robot brain.
Have you read Lee's short fiction? I don't think it's as successful as his novels, but it has so many takes on his unique math-as-science-fantasy. It doesn't answer the question of how characters conceptualize their tech, but the survey of diverse non-answers somehow still makes it easier to grasp & inhabit.
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Alex + Ada I suspect falls victim to "it just didn't occur to us"—I mean, it occurred on a theoretical throwaway line level, but not as the obvious narrative to tell. It isn't a regressive narrative, but neither is it particularly bold, re: various stories we've told about sapient robots and female sapient robots and metaphors for personhood, and I feel like the low-risk handling of gender aligns with that.
I'm glad the Swirsky piece worked! Even if it didn't 100% hit the same trope-feelings discussed above; I also like counter/parallel examples for tropes. The piece quietly blew me away; I feel like it can be hard to walk the metaphorical/speculative line in AI stories, where you're not just writing a parallel for real-world social interactions but also looking at how a robot would work & why, but this one did both parts well. It's a great look at what you hit on, on "coping with the consequences of letting people love you the way they want or need to," while also having a sincerely convincing robot brain.
Have you read Lee's short fiction? I don't think it's as successful as his novels, but it has so many takes on his unique math-as-science-fantasy. It doesn't answer the question of how characters conceptualize their tech, but the survey of diverse non-answers somehow still makes it easier to grasp & inhabit.