Posted by Alex Kingsley
https://strangehorizons.com/wordpress/non-fiction/isaac-by-allee-mead/
https://strangehorizons.com/wordpress/?p=59247
It is now near impossible to exist in this world without having an AI companion marketed at you every day. Corporations are calling on consumers to embrace artificial friendship, and many consumers are heeding that call. On the opposite end of the spectrum, plenty of people have a visceral reaction against the idea of seeking company in machines. Those who are wary of AI are often dismissed as Luddites, while those who are taken in by the allure are often decried as rubes.
While it’s easy to find oneself staunchly on one side or the other, reality is rarely so black and white. What would it look like for someone struggling with loneliness and grief to use an artificial intelligence as assistive technology? Why might this be appealing? What would be the benefits, and what would be the dangers? These are the questions that drive Allee Mead’s debut novella, Isaac. It is the story of a woman who befriends her late father’s caretaker robot. Elanor struggles to find fulfilling relationships, but in preparing for her father’s funeral, she meets Isaac, who provides her with care and comfort that she isn’t receiving from anyone else in her life. While Elanor knows that Isaac is a construct and does not experience emotions in the same way that she does, she can’t help developing affection for him.
Isaac cleverly takes science fiction and romance tropes and subverts them, defying expectations that audiences may not have realized they held. For one thing, we are conditioned to expect a particular narrative about a robot’s subjective experience emerging through its interaction with the protagonist. Isaac, however, is very clear about the fact that he does not have needs and desires in the same way a human person does, and his relationship with Elanor does not change that. Isaac is much more like a human-shaped version of the large language models that we have today than he is one of the sentient AI constructs of pulp sci-fi. Another genre trope that seems to hover over the setup is that of forbidden romance, an illicit affair between human and robot. However, given that Isaac does not experience want or desire in the same way that Elanor does, a true romantic relationship between them is not possible. This becomes heartbreakingly apparent when Elanor gives Isaac a gift: He is able to say all the right things, but unable to return her feelings the gift does not actually mean anything to him. He is able to perform acts of service for her, but she cannot reciprocate in kind.
What makes Isaac so compelling is this complexity. This is not simply a rote cautionary tale about relying on AI for intimacy. It is a very sympathetic portrait of someone who might desire that intimacy. The humans in Elanor’s life are distant and judgmental. Isaac is the first person to provide her with unconditional positive regard, meeting a psychological need that up until that point was going unmet. While he was designed specifically for the elderly and those with physical disabilities, Elanor’s anxiety is still a disability which impairs her ability to function in the world. However, it's one that makes Isaac’s role in her life less straightforward. Elanor struggles not to anthropomorphize him, just as we often struggle not to assign human characteristics to LLMs. When he’s fulfilling his duty by helping her with her anxiety, she isn't confronted with his inhuman traits. However, Isaac’s imperative is to be useful. He does not experience dissatisfaction in the same way that a human might, and he is not optimizing his performance if he is not working with someone who requires more of his help.
Isaac is also in conversation with another prevalent robot trope: the sexualization of artificial humans. Throughout the history of robot fiction, AI has been an object of erotic fascination due to its dual nature as both a person and a thing—a being that can provide sexual satisfaction while lacking its own agency, or indeed any desire of its own, and also allowing a human to own it. For this reason, asexuality and robot fiction often go hand-in-hand. Asexual people (myself included) often identify with robot characters because they feel sexual desire is expected of them or even projected onto them, and navigating a sex-centric society as someone who deviates from the norm can be frustrating and draining. Murderbot, of Martha Wells’s Murderbot Diaries series, is probably the most iconic example. Isaac takes this parallel a step further, because both Isaac and Elanor are asexual, albeit for different reasons. Isaac was not made for sex, so he has none of the traits that would drive him to seek it—no genitalia, no hormones, no libido, etc. Meanwhile, Elanor’s asexuality is an identity. It’s not a given the way it is for Isaac, and this often means she is misunderstood. Multiple times throughout the story, people assume that Elanor’s interest in Isaac is of a sexual nature. She finds this insinuation embarrassing and invalidating, reducing her desire for real companionship to lust. Elanor, like Isaac, does not experience the same wants that many project on her. This defiance of expectation is one of the reasons that she feels a bond between them.
Despite its brevity, Isaac manages to add another layer of narrative to all this through its split perspective. Elanor’s chapters alternate with flashbacks from the perspective of her late adoptive father Javi, who died in a car crash long before the start of the story. The dramatic irony immediately gives his chapters a tragic tinge—even from the first Javi chapter, we as the audience know that he is destined to die young. And yet, the story of his romance with Elanor’s father is still wholesome and uplifting, even when we know it will end in tragedy.
Javi’s story also serves to illuminate aspects of Elanor’s story. We get to see the ways in which romantic relationships were modelled for her at a young age, but we also see how the trauma of losing one of her parents so young affected her. Elanor was taught from childhood that the people she loves will be taken away from her; is it any wonder that she might seek companionship from someone who she knows cannot be snatched away? By painting a complex portrait of someone who craves human companionship but is routinely denied it, Isaac strives to understand the potential consequences of emotional reliance on AI without passing judgment on the protagonist.
A short and sweet meditation on grief and artificial companionship, Isaac is a hidden gem of a novella. In particular, it is subtly subversive in how it handles the portrayal of AI, particularly AI romance. Such a nuanced, empathetic reflection on AI is refreshing in the midst of a constant discourse war regarding implications of LLMs for society at large. At the core of Isaac is not a stance on the future of technology, but an offering of compassion for those who know how it feels to be truly lonely.
https://strangehorizons.com/wordpress/non-fiction/isaac-by-allee-mead/
https://strangehorizons.com/wordpress/?p=59247
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My mom and I both had three tattoos. One of hers was from before my time, and she got two more while I was a kid. I got my first one at eighteen; a matching one with my two cousins who are practically like my sisters. It was all three of our firsts. My second one at twenty was not perfectly matching but very samesies with my lifelong bestie. My third was just for me, and it represents a promise to myself.
