Klara and the Sun

About the book

Book author: Kazuo Ishiguro

The book takes place some time in the future.

Klara, the main character, is an “AF”, or artificial friend, a term for a robot meant for kids. She is introduced in a store where she sits by a window and looks out into the world. The store and immediate surroundings is everything she knows. Spurred by curiosity, she has to learn about the world through observing and inference. A big theme is how she reflects on events that are happening and their cause. She is like a child, but with small domain/life knowledge but extreme, AI-boosted inference skills.

She is purchased by a family; a divorced mom Chrissie and her daughter Josie. The family has some dysfunctional properties that revealed by this unlikely observer. As with any Kazuo book, the real story is between the lines. It covers some philosophical AI-eventualities of the future.

Reflection and takeaways

* Spoiler warning *

The book has some dystopic future themes going on, and these form philosophical dilemmas.

“Uplifting” is a procedure done on children through gene editing to give them the best future possible. Normal children have a hard time competing and considered as lesser humans. Josie turns critically sick because of a failed uplifting and almost dies, and she had another sister Sal who did not survive the procedure. Chrissie just wanted whats best for her kids, to maximize the probability for a better life. After Sal died, the divorced dad Paul does not care about uplifting. Paul stays grounded in “traditional”, mortal and human values and I relate to that a lot. My background is in AI and software and I am not at all convinced that things like microchips in your brain and gene editing is a good idea yet.

One morbid spin on this dystopic theme was that the mother was contracting an AF enthusiast/scientist to build an AF body-clone of Josie for a hyper-observing Klara so she can replace Josie should she die. The mother’s idea was that Klara could imitate Josie after spending much time with her. Philosophical tangents wether or not a perfect imitator still is human, and then what makes a human follows. It won’t be Josie, just something nearly identical to Josie. Is that a good idea for grieving, or a disaster? The book mentions that some people don’t like the AF’s at all and want to prohibit them. Improved models started to become too human-like, and this understandably scared people.

Klara is solar powered and gets her energy from the Sun. Because it nurishes her, she worships it, and she thinks it can save people’s life after observing a beggar wake to life when the sun comes up through her store window. She later goes to a barn (she thinks the Sun rests in the barn after setting) and forms a pact with the sun to heal Josie from her illness. I like this arc because the Sun is a natural object to worship, much like humans have and do. She just inferred that it went to the barn, and not hidden below the horizon.

I know due to my academic background this is not how AI robots would work at all, but I enjoyed the inference reflections from a super-intelligent being acting on limited information.

In the end, Klara essentially saved Josie’s life, but could not tell anyone how she did it. As Josie ages, Klara ends up more and more in a utility closet. When Josie goes to university, Klara eventually finds herself at a junkyard reminiscing about her life and memories, still activated but unable to move. A rather sad way to go, but probable in a dystopic future if you consider robots as mere metal, even after doing such a “human” thing as saving someone.

Why did I pick it

I have been curious about it for a long time. It has been recommended to me several times.

Verdict

⁴⁄₅. I don’t know who I would recommend it to but I enjoyed reading it.