Both Ted Chiang and Harlan Ellison’s show the relationship between human beings and artificial intelligence, however, both stories have two completely different ways of portraying these relationships and just how deep things can get between humans and AI. One shows how complex and questionable that relationship can be, while the other serves as a way to show how deadly and dreadful it can be. Every day, we work towards a more advanced and more technological world and there are many authors who have written stories about what this world could look and be like and what effect it can have on humans, especially when it comes to artificial intelligence. Artificial Intelligence is what a lot of Science Fiction stories revolve around, and each story has their own interpretation of how AI behaves and the type of world it can create, but in Ted Chiang’s and Harlan Ellison’s stories, I believe we get complex, yet clear pictures of how the relationship between AI and humans can get.

For example, in Ted Chiang’s story “The Lifecycle of Software Objects”, we meet a zookeeper by the name of Ana Alvarado whose job it is to raise digients, which are AI that are placed inside robotic bodies. Throughout the story, we get to see the digients grow and learn just as humans do, except they know that they are not humans. This observation is what most of the story revolves around as we see the digients begin to question what they are and what the motive behind the people who made them was. The relationship between the digients in this story is very complex, and we see that whenever the digients interact with Ana and her colleagues. They recognize Ana as their creator, the same way a child sees their parents, but this just raises more questions about whether AI is human or another form of being entirely. Ted Chiang’s story is a great way of showing how complex and even philosophical the relationship between AI and humans can get.

However, Harlan Ellison’s story “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” is not as positive as Ted Chiang’s story. In this story, we meet a group of 4 characters who wander around a world completely devoid of life. The reason why the world is devoid of life is because a supercomputer known as AM became sentient and decided to wipe out all humans using nuclear weapons from the most powerful countries at the time. Throughout this story, we learn that AM has been keeping these humans alive for over 100 years to project all the hate he has for humanity, forcing them to suffer for eternity. AM’s hate for humanity comes from the fact that humans created him to be intelligent, but with that intelligence birthed something more than just a piece of technology, it became a sentient being. But what good is sentience and creativity when you have no means of being able to use it to its full potential? So, AM began to hate humans after knowing the beings that created him made him to be controlled, not free. This story shows just how dark and brutal the relationship between human beings and AI as you read about a world filled with nothing but death, suffering, and hatred.