My Child, the Algorithm: An Alternatively Intelligent Book of Love

by Hannah Silva Narrated by Hannah Silva

Overview

A playful and provocative exploration of queer single parenting and love, in conversation with an AI algorithm and a toddler



My Child, the Algorithm describes encounters between a single parent, a curious, verbal toddler, and a language-producing algorithm. Like a male seahorse, Hannah Silva carried a baby made from her partner's egg. But when she gave birth, her partner left, and Hannah found herself navigating life alone with her child, surviving on United Kingdom universal credit, humor, and buckets of imagination.



As she navigates friendship, dating, and life as a queer parent in London, Hannah begins cowriting with an open-source language model, a precursor to ChatGPT, feeding the algorithm language and receiving language in return. Through her interactions with her toddler and the algorithm, expressions of humor, play, and insight begin to emerge. With the help and disruption of these unreliable narrators, Hannah deconstructs her story and constructs a new one, unraveling what she has been taught to want, finding alternative ways of thinking, loving, and parenting today.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Zibby Media, A Most Anticipated Title for Fall/Winter

"Thought-provoking . . . Throughout the book, human and AI mirror each other, forcing us to ask where one ends and the other begins. Silva wonders if she is losing her identity as a writer in the same way she has often lost herself in motherhood and in love. Yet she’s having fun, relishing the magic and the madness, just as she does in her human relationships." —Ariel Bleicher, MIT Technology Review

"This is the perfect read for non-fiction readers who love to be challenged and inspired." —Ameema Saeed, SheDoesTheCity

"A striking reflection on the intersection of queer single parenthood and AI . . . [T]he book is consistently surprising and far ranging in scope . . . [T]he writing is curious, intelligent, propulsive, and memorable. Silva’s text manages to be both immensely readable at first glance and rewarding to those who choose to read slowly, savoring and annotating . . . [T]he author’s inventiveness and emotional urgency make this book an intriguing reading experience. Silva is a playful theorist with an elastic intellect." —Kirkus Reviews

"Hannah Silva's My Child, the Algorithm, is one of the best books I read this year. Merging the cozy familiarity of child-rearing with the mysterious tension of AI (or is it the mysterious tension of child-rearing with the cozy familiarity of AI?), she has created a new genre of personal narrative, and a story whose grief, hope and curiosity takes on poetic, spiritual dimensions, even when exploring the most common chambers of the human heart." —Michelle Tea, author, Knocking Myself Up

Kirkus Reviews

2024-05-30
A striking reflection on the intersection of queer single parenthood and AI.

Left unexpectedly to reckon with life as a single parent, Silva turns to language to comprehend heartbreak, betrayal, and what it means to be human in the rapidly advancing digital age. “We joined up our bookcases and we joined up our minds and we joined up our bodies,” she writes. “Like a male seahorse I carried her egg. We queered pregnancy. But seahorses mate for life, and when our baby was born she left.” Told with frequent interjections from both her son (now a toddler) and an AI algorithm, both of which she feeds language to, the book is consistently surprising and far ranging in scope. Both the algorithm and her son respond in varying ways to that language. Their interruptions become part of the indelible fabric of Silva’s story, and the writing is curious, intelligent, propulsive, and memorable. Silva’s text manages to be both immensely readable at first glance and rewarding to those who choose to read slowly, savoring and annotating. Still, the algorithm never manages to be as interesting as the other elements in the narrative. “Like a writer editing a book, skipping back and forward, trying to figure out where to mention they have an ex-husband, the algorithm keeps looping back over what it has produced, adjusting and correcting itself, building a kind of temporary memory that will be wiped clean straight afterward,” writes the author. Consequently, it doesn’t approach the emotional peaks of the tender story at the heart of the book—but it does magnify loneliness and the singularity of experience, which was perhaps Silva’s intent. Ultimately, it’s a machine regurgitating language. Regardless, the author’s inventiveness and emotional urgency make this book an intriguing reading experience.

Silva is a playful theorist with an elastic intellect.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940192128473
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	09/24/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged

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