William Morrow and Company, Inc.

New York

1994

Reviewed by: Heather Rider

8/6/98

Rudy Rucker, author of The Hacker and the Ants, intended to write a futuristic book that places artificial intelligence in mainstream America. The book is set sometime in the not-so-far-future, where technology has a commonplace function in society. These are the days of DTV (digital TV), shopping in cyberspace, household robots, and telecommuting.

This fictional work integrates many hot AI topics into the plot: speech synthesis, voice recognition, evolving artificial life forms and advanced robotics. Rucker takes a weak AI position throughout the novel, presenting machines that either act like humans or imitate humans. The machines that he displays throughout the work integrate advanced AI capabilities into the everyday life of his characters and their lives.

Jerzy Rugby, the protagonist of this work, is a "hacker", a computer programmer who is working for a company called Go Motion Inc. Go Motion builds intelligent robots that are supposed to be household helpers: they do chores for people by understanding their verbal commands.

Jerzy’s boss has also given Jerzy the go-ahead to develop a self-evolving artificial life form that develops over the Net. This "life form" takes the appearance of ants on the Net. Jerzy created them and then set them free to roam the Net, developing intelligence and mutating on their own. Somehow the ants evolve into somewhat evil entities. They travel through cable wires and latch onto the DTV chips in people’s TV’s, thereby disabling the televisions. The public is outraged and Jerzy becomes a wanted man.

As previously mentioned, Rucker takes a weak AI position, presenting machines with AI capabilities as imitators of human activity and ability. Jerzy’s home robot Studly not only understands Jerzy’s vocal commands, but also has the ability to speak. A typical conversation between Studly and Jerzy would sound like this passage:

"‘Studly.’

‘Yes, Jerzy?’ Studly had a pleasant voice thanks to his Talkboy chip.

‘Do you know anything about the ants?’

‘Last week, I put the Grants For Ants ant poison packages near all the doors as instructed. I have not seen any ants in our house today.’

‘I mean ants inside my computer.’

‘Why do you say there are ants inside you computer, Jerzy?’"(36)

Rucker also creates Studly to appear as a somewhat human-like machine: it has single-jointed legs which end in stunt-bicycle wheels. The machine also has arms and an internal gyroscope which keeps the machine balanced. These mechanisms allow Studly to move around on uneven terrain, climb in or out of a car and to go up or down stairs.

This book is aimed at an all-purpose audience. Throughout the novel, Rucker attempts to initiate the novice reader to AI concepts. Often, he will present AI vocabulary, which he sets off in italics. He then follows with the definition of the word. Rucker will then use the new vocabulary throughout the rset of the novel.

Even with this attempt at leveling the novel for any reader, whether an AI novice or old-pro, Rucker does not succeed. Often the book is filled with unexplained technical jargon or dialogue. His imagery is poor: he often creates fanciful cyberspace scenes that are hard to follow, with muddled pictures or concepts that lose the reader. The book is an odd mix of techie terminology and dumbed-down italicized vocabulary words that do not flow well. The italicized vocabulary keeps popping up throughout the work causing distraction instead of having an explanatory benefit as intended. Rucker should have picked one audience, either general or advanced, and catered to that audience only.

Rudy Rucker, a professor at San Jose University, has a homepage at: http://www.mathcs.sjsu.edu/faculty/rucker/