Story by Ted Chiang, read in his short story collection Exhalation. Recommended via Jenny Odell’s Saving Time
Ana and Derek work at a company making digients (a form of artificial intelligence, embodied in physical form). The story explores the experience of personhood and the question of what makes a person.
One of the conflicts comes through two companies that want to take the digients, nearly extinct without a maintained and updated digital land. The company Exponential wants digient as product, to aid the human. Binary Desire wants digients for sex purposes—with opt in from the digient, for mutual connection with humans.
“Experience isn’t merely the best teacher; it’s the only teacher. If she’s learned anything raising Jax, ti’s that there are no shortcuts; if you want to create the common sense that comes from twenty years of being in the world, you need to devote twenty years to the task.”
Experience is algorithmically incompressible.
The human ←> digient relationship
- Willingness to make effort
- “Good parenting” is required especially while navigating ethical, abstract questions