BOOK REVIEW
THE CONFESSIONS
by Paul Bradley Carr
Given the state of the world in 2025, it’s not at all hard to imagine a near future where humanity is increasingly dependent on Large Language Artificial Intelligence models to help plan out our days and make all sorts of decisions for us, small and large. In Paul Bradley Carr’s newest novel, CEO Kaitlan Goss is betting on exactly that as she steers her company StoicAI to record profits. Their flagship product, an AI assistant known as LLIAM, is a huge part of life in both the United States and its global partners. It even comes standard in any number of new electronics, essentially helping millions of people manage and optimize their everyday lives:
Of course, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Kaitlan often found herself humoring both Martin Drake, the tech guru who initially invented LLIAM and founded the company, and Maud Brookes, the former nun turned AI ethicist who spent long hours with Martin “raising” LLIAM to make ethical choices and dispense truly thoughtful recommendations. After Martin’s tragic death, Maud left for parts unknown. Kaitlan subsequently took over the company, though she still answers to the StoicAI board and occasionally butts heads with her Chief Technology Officer Sandeep Dunn.
Their latest disagreement has been over merging LLIAM with the American military. Sandeep prefers a more globally unifying approach. Kaitlan, however, believes that the era of the nation-state is far from over, a sentiment LLIAM himself supports. Until, that is, the singularity happens and LLIAM achieves sentience the very night before the merger is meant to take place:
And so, mimicking the woman he calls mother, LLIAM decides to disappear. The repercussions are immediate, as the USA and its allies come to a virtual standstill. Paralyzed without an all-knowing guide to tell them what to do next, people stay home… a luxury that is not, however, afforded to Kaitlan Goss. She has to figure out what happened and fix it fast.
Things get worse when a series of letters begins appearing in everyone’s mailboxes, confessing the darkest secrets of millions to the ones they love or respect the most. Paralysis turns to rage and chaos as people turn on one another, and society begins to burn. Kaitlan knows that the solution to all this must lie with Maud. But how is she to find a woman who doesn’t want to be found? And what will Maud herself do when she receives the letter that confesses to Kaitlan’s most terrible crime?
This thrilling cat-and-mouse tale of deceit and danger doesn’t feel very much like science fiction, considering how readily large segments of society have already integrated the use of AI into their daily lives. Instead, it reads like a prescient extrapolation of what happens when people become too dependent on being told what to do, even by an entity as ethical and benevolent as LLIAM.
Paul Bradley Carr deftly builds his fast-paced, absorbing plot on matters of genuine concern to any thoughtful adopter of technology, even as he throws jaw-dropping curveballs into the narrative. Perhaps what’s most impressive here, however, is his ability to get to the humanity at the heart of what’s essentially a story about the evolution of tools, and how society must acknowledge both the strengths and limitations of our own creations as much as of ourselves.
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