This looks like an interesting game. I’ve backed it.

The setup reminds me a lot of Iain M. Banks’s short story ‘Descendant’ (in the ‘State of the Art’ collection). But the AI-rights angle is new to this piece – and it’s set in a pretty different environment, too.

I’m deliberately avoiding doing a story about the rights of AIs in ‘Decrypting Rita’; it’s a problem I think we’re going to need to be confronting soon, and one I have definitely taken sides on – but it’s not an issue I’m interested in grappling with. I’d rather just tell a story set in a world where that battle has been had, and my side won. (If you’re wondering, there ARE people in Rita1’s world who think AIs shouldn’t be treated as fully human, but they have about as much respect as a backwoods Louisiana bigot who misses the days of slave ownership. You won’t be seeing any of them in the story.)

I don’t want to tell a Struggle For AI Rights story, but I’m glad there are people who do. And I’m glad to be able to support them when it looks like they’re going to make an interesting one.