Tech leaders say that they have never witnessed changes so rapid as the ones artificial intelligence is causing now. Writers, constrained by publishing cycles, can only move so fast. But we are beginning to see serious responses. Over the past three months, Elif Batuman has published a long essay about using ChatGPT to locate a Proust quote — a frustrating experience, like the tech — and Sheila Heti has collaborated with AI to produce a richly strange, jolting short story that begins with an artificial intelligence called Mommy.
The virtual being at the centre of Julianne Pachico’s latest novel — one of the first full-length attempts to reckon with AI’s recent prominence — also happens to be a maternal figure. But the relationship is more ambiguous and fraught. In Jungle House, a young woman called Lena lives in the rainforest as the caretaker of a high-tech holiday home, whose sophisticated control system she calls “Mother”. Equipped with cameras, heard over speakers, and acting through a domestic staff of “droids”, Mother is sort of a souped-up Alexa, albeit one with the capacity to worry about her own obsolescence and shoot bullets at intruders.
The South American setting of the novel is never named, but might be a futuristic version of Colombia, where the British-American author has spent much of her life, and where she has set two previous books. The people who own Jungle House, the Morel family — rich, fair-haired, with European heritage and plantation-owning history — visit only intermittently. There is mention of “rebels” and “upcoming elections”. Climate and biodiversity collapse has already happened; jaguars haven’t been seen “for generations”. But natural resources are still being exploited aggressively. Meanwhile, the machines have their own grand plan.