A range of good and okay stories about the future of AI. I felt like a lot of these didn't go as far with their concepts as I had hoped they would. Favorites were Silicon Hearts by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Good Stories by Ken Liu, Torso by H. Pueyo, and The Laugh Machine by Auston Habershaw.

Well this one got lost the shuffle of life and it is very relevant. "The Digital Aesthete: Human Musings on the Interaction of Art and AI" is a collection of short stories about AI and various fields. Predominantly art and their spot in it.

Narrated by David Bendena Lauren DePorre, Mark Owen, Nick Mondelli, Psalm Morant, Hope Shangle, Aimee Reid, Jackie Meloche, and Lesa Lockford.

Reasons to read:
-There are some actual good arguments in here
-True AI is something we really need to start considering, because if it exists a lot of folks are going to freak out

Cons:
-Unfortunately AI is being used for real dumb stuff right now and not things that help people.

NetGalley ARC audiobook

With AI in the for front of the news, I've worried that it will replace creativity. I saw a future of AI books, art, tv and movies. These stories take on the problem of how AI will impact the future.

I requested this book because it has a Ken Liu story I haven't read before, Good Stories. This was my favorite story in the collection. The narrator works for Good Stories which tells stories via AI. This story dealt with AI in a very philosophical way.

The rest of the stories vary in quality. Many of them were very similar in theme.

Other stories I enjoyed:

Silicon Hearts by Adrian Tchaikovsky
A Beautiful War by Fang Zeyu
Stage Shows and Schnauzers by Tina Connolly
The Factory of Market Desires

Like any anthology there are stories that shine brighter than others, though I did enjoy them all. Throughout history AI has been depicted as robots or helping people lead a better life or the beginning of an apocalypse. Now, today, we are experience AI but not in the way we intended or thought we would. We are seeing AI infiltrate the creative space and try to take over in one way or another. This book takes that and asks the questions - What would our future look like? What would a future with AI as we know it today, be like?

It does a phenomenal job answering this question. Without spoiling too much the story that stood out the most to me were the AI algorithms used to write novels and the "success rate" of them, especially when trying to win an award. Absolutely wild! There's another story with a sentient AI who is obsessed with acting, and he is a detective's assistant. Those are just two, if I listed them all this review would be too long. If you are able to check this out, I recommend you do so!

"The Digital Aesthete: Human Musings on the Intersection of Art and AI" by Alex Shvartsman and Ken Liu is an anthology of 17 short stories. I listened to the audiobook, and each story has a different narrator. They all did well narrating.

Only two of the stories earned five stars from me. One was
✅️"Stage Shows and Schnauzers" by Tina Connolly. This one has some humor. It is about a young adult female detective and her AI named Gabriel. He goes into an animatronic dog to help solve a crime.

The other story I thought was excellent was
✅️"The Form of Things Unknown" by Julie Nováková which addresses the issue of humans who are prejudiced against human-AI joined people. It is set on an alien planet with first exposure to the indigent life forms that look like human sized ants

My four star stories in this anthology were as follows:
✅️"Silicone Hearts" by Adrian Tchaikovsky
✅️"A Beautiful War " by Fang Zeyu, translated by Nathan Faries
✅️"The Factory of Market Desires" by Rodrigo Culagovski
✅️"Ṭorso" by H. Pueyo
✅️"The Laugh Machine" by Austin Habershaw

The last story was two or three times as long as the others. It was interesting and earned 3.5 stars from me. It is called
✅️"Prompt" by Marina and Sergei Dyachenko translated by Julia Meitov Hersey. This one is about a theatre called Prompt run by an AI. It decides which plays are acceptable or not.

Three stories were too confusing and only got one or two stars. The rest were 3 stars.

Averaging all my ratings (57/17) equals 3.35 stars, rounded down to 3 stars.

The stories are all interesting and give a lot to think about regarding AI and art. I recommend this to anyone interested in these topics.

Thank you to Netgalley, Dreamscape Media/Dreamscape Lore, and editors Alex Shvartsman and Ken Liu for providing this audiobook in exchange for my honest review.

Absolutely phenomenal works. Each And every story asks a question about a different facet of our lives that could be benefited or harmed by AI.
I can read this a 100 times and still come away with different thoughts. Absolutely worth the read!

great performances and interesting content that is timely with everything AI going on at the moment. definitely recommend.

I love this as a theme for a collection of stories, and there was such an interesting variety. AI is the present and the future, and these writers found interesting ways to show the influence, from something as simple as romance writing to crime to actual dystopian situations. I'm kind of cheating because I read the print first, but honestly I would recommend the audiobook more because WOW these performances are fantastic. Every story feels like an individual performance, with multiple voices when necessary to create the right effect.
There are some really great writers in this collection, too. I think even people who don't necessarily read sci fi short stories will enjoy this. Thanks to NetGalley for letting me listen to this audiobook.

I took ages to really grab this book and start reading, and I must say it, when I finally got hold of the audiobook I was able to go from start and end, let me explain why, this is a collection of stories that are about AI, AI is in the centre, the main character or what gives motive for the main character to continue his or her way, in one of the stories AI is a son, in other is a lover, and in many of the stories the AI gets more human than the actual humans in the story. When reading I didn’t feel motivated enough to read it through, but when I got the audiobook, it was a different story, I enjoyed much more having the book and the stories read to me, since it was the work of several readers, and when that happen in anthologies or short story collections that grabs my attention even more because that makes a fence in my mind and I know where one begins and others finish.

While I did like some of the stories others I got a bit bored and I was only able to go through because the people reading the stories in the audiobook version did a great job, so I can only recommend for you to grab the audiobook or if you really like to imagine new realities where AI is the main character or how AI could be better than humans.

Thank you Netgalley and Arc Manor | CAEZIK SF & Fantasy, for the free ARC and this is my honest opinion.

3 stars for Ebook version and 4 stars for audiobook