Satire isn't my usual literary wheelhouse when it comes to books I seek out, but I've been reading basically anything lately. What I really enjoyed about this book is that it is a self-effacing philosophical work of art. It is easy to render it among satirical company but the important philosophical reflections gave me some pause. Satire is meandering philosophy that sees no reason to rush, as though it's a lazy Sunday in a town whose sidewalks have rolled up the night before. Neal's book, while personifying generative AI models, provides an impetus to reflect on the nature of AI, yes, but more than that the nature of our humanity that we require machines to do things like make a resume for a warehouse worker who had 3 jobs in 6 months, sound grandiose to the point of ridicule. It's not about the digs towards specific AI platforms but asks a more important question of the reader: what world have we made where we need a machine to lift the entry level floor to such heights that one's humanity is no longer enough to relate to one another?

It isn't an overly optimistic view of AI, nor is it among its most outspoken critics. It works with what we know now, which is not that much at all about AI aside from the actually existing nature of it (i.e. it steers clear of the speculative that would turn it into a sci-fi satire). This present-moment-facing nature of it risks obsolescence in one way, but our place on the precipice of an AI-created world may help it weather pop culture's otherwise one-hit-wonder-force zeitgeist winds. It's a short, readable, thought-provoking book that I've enjoyed.

I can easily see this book fitting among classics in a post-secondary philosophy class. It would do well as an emphatic punctuation mark in a syllabus among Marshall McLuhan, Guy Debord ("The Society of the Spectacle"), Homi K. Bhabha ("The Location of Culture"), and the likes of Jean Beaudrillard ("Simulacra and Simulation"). Beyond the academy, it would be a great read in a book club reading through books about AI that might include: "Atlas of AI" by Kate Crawford, "Race After Technology" by Ruha Benjamin, and many others.