Review: The Lifecycle of Software Objects

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This might be a novella, but it is one of the longest works by Ted Chiang. THE LIFECYCLE OF SOFTWARE OBJECTS is a complex, yet simple sort of book. It’s a study of empathy, relationship, and artificial intelligence. Chaing is one of those writers who can execute an idea within a sentence or in a page and this novella is no different, over the course of 150 pages, he unpacks what it would be like to bond with AIs generated from code.

Our entry points are Ana and Derek, the former who used to...