News DeskIn a review in The Telegraph, the political thriller “2054” by Elliot Ackerman and James Stavridis is described as envisioning a future world reshaped by the development of artificial superintelligence, known as “the Singularity.”
The novel, a sequel to their 2021 book “2034,” is set in a world beset by pandemics and climatic disruptions. It begins with the mysterious death of the U.S. president, seemingly by remote gene-editing, hinting that a rival power has mastered radical biotechnologies tied to the Singularity.
As characters from the previous book, now adults, grapple with the president’s murder and a popular insurrection, they journey to meet the aging futurist Ray Kurzweil in Brazil to unlock secrets about this “intelligence explosion” poised to integrate machine and human consciousness.
Thriller novels have frequently served as vehicles to alert policymakers about potential dangers they may be overlooking, ever since Erskine Childers’s 1903 novel “The Riddle of the Sands” cautioned the British government that Germany, not France, posed the gravest threat in the dawning 20th century – capitalizing on the notion that a gripping tale may better grip readers than a dry policy report.
While light on intricate world-building, “2054” offers a propulsive spy narrative laced with wit and philosophical musings about humanity’s relationship with technology. Have we already surrendered so much to tech giants that a Singularity is underway?
The authors, a novelist and former NATO commander, craft a “chilling vision” that doubles as a “page turning beach read” – one positing that mastery of super intelligent A.I. could upend global power like nuclear weapons once did.
