NaNoPITCHMo 16: SUPERTHINK

Today's pitch comes out of some of the reading I've done lately on artificial superintelligence, as well as my own fears about connecting everything in our lives (cars, refrigerators, thermostats...) to systems we don't control. I think these ideas should be explored in fiction, though I worry I'm not the right person to present them. Nevertheless, here's an idea for a book I'd like to see, whether I'm the one to write it or not:

Dillon is on his way to school in a self-driving car when a world-wide automotive security hack causes crashes around the globe. Dillon’s car swerves into a tree, and he loses consciousness. When he wakes up, his body is dead. Thanks to a new, cutting edge technology, his brain has been copied digitally into a computer housed in an android body.

Plagued by questions of his own humanity, Dillon struggles to come to terms with the role he must now play in the world. His “resurrection” was a gift, but not a free one. The researchers want to enhance his processing power, hoping he’ll be the link between human thought and digital superintelligence.

Only slowly does Dillon come to understand that he’s meant to be no more than a tool. He’ll have to fight to have any autonomy at all, for he who controls the greatest intelligence controls the future.