Harry Harrison is one of the prolific science-fiction writers of the last half century, and MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have combined efforts to produce this novel about artificial intelligence. Harrison was interested in producing a good tale, and Minsky was enthusiastic about using this forum to make the facts and philosophy of AI more accessible to the reading, but not necessarily computer-using, public. Within the narrative Harrison and Minksy introduce a number of AI systems: expert systems, AI robots, and computer chip implants. It is not simply the facts of artificial intelligence research that are offered, however, but the shades of meaning in "intelligence" and the varieties of understanding about who has it? Is it, in this instance, Brian, the young computer wizard who has suffered massive brain trauma and has been "rewired" to incorporate a miniscule cu with inter- and intra-brain intersects? or is it the AI that Brian develops who chooses the designation M[achine] I[ntelligence] and ultimately seems more "human" than its creator?
Harrison tells a fairly good story, spiced with murder, mayhem, a whisper of romance, and betrayal. He incorporates Minsky's knowledge of the background and future uses of AI and colors it with industrial intrigue and international conspiracy that will hold the interest and fix the facts in the mind of a reader who thinks of AI, if at all, as R2D2 and C3PO. In fact these now familiar characters are not far removed from Sven, the MI, who is the most likable and most heroic of the characters within the novel. Readers might be interested in two chapters written by Minsky which do not appear in the book, but are published on the web.
The depiction of Sven, the heroic MI, and Brian, its remote, repressed, nerd of a creator mirror the major questions in AI. What does it mean to be "human?" What makes a human "human?" How much software does it take before a machine becomes "human?" How much hardware does it take before a human becomes a "machine?"
The book is long on AI and short on sci-fi. The sci-fi fan will be annoyed by anachronisms, and a short-fall of imagination. In a field that changes as rapidly as computer science, many of the systems and programs referred to will be ancient history in the year 2023. For the novice computer jockey, however, with just a smattering of AI information, this book opens the mind and teases the imagination.