What's the Name of That Book??? discussion
► UNSOLVED: One specific book
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YA maybe? Computer program becomes sentient. Read 20 years ago or so
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Regarding your NOT-stupid question: go to the top of the page and click the "What's the name of that book?" link. Then look at the right sidebar where there will be a bunch of links. Click on "My Group Topics." Voila!
Bump. I had forgotten about this thread.
Marsha wrote: "Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card...https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3..."Definitely not, since I read Ender's Game long before this one, and have reread at least once since then :)
Marsha wrote: "The Adolescence of P-1 by Thomas J. Ryan https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1..."
Hmm, the plot summary in Wikipedia doesn't seem similar at all. Going to try to track a copy just in case.
At some point, the program asks him a question, and the kid tells it something like "figure it out yourself". So the program connects to a database, and another database, and another, looking for information, and eventually gains sentience.
SPOILER AHEAD
Eventually, as usual in these stories, the government learns about the AI, and is destroyed either willingly or not.
The adults/friends around the kid tell him that they won't be able to rebuild the AI, because they don't have a backup of its thoughts (or something like that, I guess they mean the connections between information that makes the AI an AI) stored anywhere.
Then the kid brings out entire reams of his printed interactions with the program and asks if it would be enough, at which point the book ends.
I don't remember anything about the cover, sorry. Also don't remember the age of the kid, but I guess most likely between 8 and 15 years.
I'm using AI to describe the program, but don't remember if it was used in the book like that.
Edit: stupid unrelated question, I want to bump another request I created a while ago, I'm sure it has been more than 30 days. But don't know how to find my own requests, and don't see anything obvious on my profile to see only discussions I started.