Tuesday, November 14, 2023

Murder by Pixel: Crime and Responsibility in the Digital Darkness, by S. L. Huang

Murder by Pixel reads like a current Wired Magazine article.  I'm only halfway sure it isn't one.  The actions described (digital harassment until the target commits suicide) happen now.  The bot doing the harassing is not overly sophisticated, except in that it is able to penetrate various devices to deliver messages to the target.  I think the awards committees knew what they were doing, and as such believe that the characters and specifics were made up.  Why present this as SF, rather than, say, doing some reporting and finding real instances?  

Perhaps it reads like that because it was probably written 18 months ago.  It does reference Chat-GPT3.

It's an interesting take, I'm just not sure how it could be speculative, even then.  Cory Doctorow says that he writes SF by looking at the cutting edge of what is possible now.  I think perhaps Huang missed the edge and is further back.

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