Artificial intelligence — villain or savior?
This is a thriller that tackles many different aspects of AI, but specifically in this book it is working on delivering medical care to marginalized veterans. Avery Keene, now working in the private sector, is hired by Dr. Rafe Diaz, CEO and founder of Camasca, an AI enabled healthcare tech company after an incident that resulted in the death of one of the head programmers. Ruled an accident in a cursory police investigation, Diaz is concerned that there’s something going on that might impact the IPO he’s planning. Avery is meant to assemble a team as an internal investigative unit with attorney client privilege to see if there are any potential issues that might derail the big debut. So Avery gets her best friends and boyfriend on board and they get busy.
There’s a lot of technical jargon and detail about AI and a lot of other things in this novel. It’s almost exhausting to read through the info dumps, even though it’s all very interesting. And scary. Especially when it starts to look like the various components of this huge neural network might be going rogue. I really liked the medical application aspects and the mission of Camasca with its focus on veterans. But the bottom line is that giving over a huge part of anything to quantum computers with sophisticated learning models could prove more deleterious than it does good.
I wasn’t sure who or what was going to answer the questions about the issues at the company so I had to finish the book in one sitting. Definitely mind boggling and will provide a lot to think about. At present, there’s no regulation or set of rules about how this type of technology is to be created, implemented and evaluated so I still feel that without some checks and balances it could all be a very dangerous tool in the wrong hands. And certainly I don’t want to see sentience.
The author is obviously creative and brilliant and I’ve enjoyed the previous Avery Keene books as well. Who knows what’s next for her and friends, but I look forward to reading more.
I was able to listen to the audio book while also following along in the e-book ARC provided by the publisher. The narrator, Adenrale Ojo, did a great job of voicing the characters and giving the appropriate dramatic flair. The voices were distinct, but of course I always wish for a male to be doing the men. The production enhanced my enjoyment of the story.
This is part of a series, the third book, and they should be read from the beginning in order.
Tags - legal thriller, suspense, AI, medical, veterans, murder, greed
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