Super powerful AI company

With the advent of artificial intelligence, the question of what separates the human mind form a algorithm that grows remains to be answered. Joanna Kavenna’s Zed novel makes references to King Lear’s “unnecessary letter” as an unknowable quantity the way that people after behaving predictably for years can suddenly go crazy.

Zed describes a world of corporate pretenders, broken software and algorithms that never quite work as well as they are supposed to. Guy Matthias, CEO of Beetle, has become one of the world’s most powerful and influential figures, untaxed and ungoverned, his trans-Atlantic company operates beyond the control of governments or the law.

A perfect storm was brewing when his wife wants to leave him, fed up with his multiple infidelities, malfunctioning Beetle software has led to some unfortunate deaths which are proving hard to cover up, and his expected deal with China is proving troublingly elusive with a mystery hacker, Gogol, hot on his trail.

Guy has knowledge about everyone, and can threaten a judge or minister with the release of damaging material to ensure outcomes coincides with his company policy.

Guy’s aid Douglas Varley, Britain’s flailing female PM, conflicted national security agent Eloise Jayne, depressed Journalist David Strachey and Gogol.  The question is how do you live in reality when nobody knows anything, and all knowledge all certainty is partly or completely fake.

In the current age of Cambridge Analytica Ltd a British political consulting firm which combined data mining and data brokerage and data analysis with strategic communication during the electoral processes, was involved in 44 US political races in 2014 and 2015 performed data analysis services for Ted Curz’s presidential campaign and in 2016 worked for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. The company had acquired and used personal data about Facebook users from an external researcher who had told Facebook he was collecting it for academic purposes. Zed is quite relevant when AI will dominate our lives.

Zed by Joanna Kavenna, Faber 16:99, 384 pages.