249: Annie Bot
This time we discussed Annie Bot, written by Sierra Greer and narrated by Jennifer Jill Araya.
Thank you to Libro.fm ALC Program, HarperAudio, and Mariner Books for providing review copies of Annie Bot for today’s episode.
Annie Bot [Libro.fm]
Artificial Intelligence in Science Fiction [Episode 200]
Klara and the Sun [Libro.fm] / [Episode 110]
The Mountain in the Sea [Libro.fm] / [Episode 172]
The Stepford Wives [Libro.fm]
Know My Name [Libro.fm]
Transcript
This is Narrated, a podcast about audiobooks and a celebration of storytelling. I'm Scott Ullery.
I'm Lisa McCarty.
And I'm Shachi Bhatt.
This time on Narrated, we'll be discussing Annie Bot, written by Sierra Greer and narrated by Jennifer Jill Araya. Thank you to Libro.fm ALC Program, HarperAudio, and Mariner Books for providing review copies of Annie Bot for today's episode.
And speaking of Libro.fm, Shachi, you had something that you wanted to mention about there.
I am very excited because recently on social media, Libro.fm announced a very fun new feature in their app, which is you can change your icon to a different look. And I'm delighted by the choices. And I was curious if the two of you have seen the options.
And if so, did you pick the cat?
I have not seen the options.
I did take a look at the options. I did not pick the cat, you know, I'm sorry.
Well, I mean, you should go back and pick the cat. It's very cute. So I think it's really cool when apps do this, if any other app developers are listening.
It is a cool way to be able to customize your app experience. And it is, you know, it doesn't actually change the functionality other than if, let's say, you organize your apps by color or you have a certain look to how you organize your phone.
Right.
It's just a nice little feature. And there's a very cute cat wearing headphones, reading an audio book, listening to an audio book. And I'm just here to say, I think everyone should pick that icon.
It is cute. And yeah, there's a lot of fun options. So it's, you know, I mean, I think we've said before, you know, the Libro.fm app overall is definitely one of the better ones.
And so.
And one of the better ones for the world in terms of how it works too.
Yes, yes, certainly just the model that goes by. But it is nice to have kind of the little customizations as well.
Especially if it's a cat.
Do you like cats by chance?
Maybe a little bit. I bet Taylor Swift has the cat icon.
Fair enough.
All right, so shall we talk about Annie Bot?
Absolutely. Do you want to kick us off?
Sure. So I got my overview ready. And I realized that I, although this book I think is being marketed and presented more as in literary fiction kind of way than in a genre way, I think that I have put my overview together like a total sci-fi nerd.
So I'm just going to embrace that. And here we go.
I'm here for it.
So this is told from the point of view of Annie, who is a robot companion owned by a man named Doug. And we quickly learn that she is programmed to be an artificial girlfriend when she's in cuddle bunny mode.
Her line of robots called Stella also has a mode called Abigail, which is essentially a house cleaner and cook.
And it's possible to leave these bots in their default mode where their personalities are static as programmed or to put them in autodidactic modes that they'll learn and grow. So machine learning stuff going on. Doug has switched Annie to autodidactic mode, but now he is having trouble dealing with her growth and the fact that she's starting to realize that she has no autonomy and maybe she'd like some.
There's also an early encounter with Doug's college roommate who's visiting who coerces her into sex and convinces her to hide it from Doug, which accentuates her feelings of discontent and Doug's suspicion. Doug is every red flag, terrible, emotionally abusive boyfriend, and it is no surprise that he chose a bot who couldn't say no to him. I thought this book was a good example of Al being used as a metaphor for the way that real people are seen as not fully human, in this case women, and there's also a race aspect because he based Annie's features on his ex-wife, who is black while Doug is white, but lightened her skin, and it sounds like he would have copied the ex completely if the company hadn't had a policy against it.
So there is a lot going on here, and this is definitely a story of gaining agency and empowerment.
I think that's a good summary.
Yeah, you talked a little bit about this, but I was definitely reminded of our discussion of Al in science fiction back in episode 200. And this definitely is in that kind of category that I think we talked about is kind of identity and rights and who gets to be human and what the rights are, and especially I think in the early part of it. And I think that's also accentuated by the fact that we are following from Annie's perspective that kind of reinforces that, because we can see the inner monologue and how she's interpreting and analyzing the situation that maybe Doug or the others don't.
Whereas I think later on then, like you said, we get I think a little bit more into that relationship aspect and really an abusive relationship in many ways. And I would echo what I think Shuchi text us a couple of pages in that Doug is, I think to put it gently, a deeply flawed individual with a lot of issues that he is not processing in healthy ways for himself and certainly for Annie and others around him.
I think the actual phrase that I used was the worm emoji, the bacteria emoji and the trash can emoji. So I'd like to be properly quoted.
And also the, I'm about to throw up the phrase emoji.
I just want that on the record. That's fair.
That's fair and all absolutely justified.
I'm sorry to worms that may be listening, if that's offensive. So what I loved about this book is, even though we have the story from Annie's point of view and as Lisa mentioned, she's very much a robot that is in Al learning mode. We, the readers can immediately pick up on Doug's abusiveness and you can tell that he's a bad seed within a few pages.
I don't even think it takes a whole chapter to get to the ickiness of his personality.
Yeah, he makes a comment about her lack of adequate cleaning within the first paragraph or two that is already, you already sort of got this guy pegged.
That's right.
Oh, just, yeah, the checkbox on this, again, whether it's the controlling and Micromanaging. Behavior there, micromanage or the adjusting of her weight and features and blah, just makes the skin crawl, but a lot of his behavior.
He's also openly, I mean, he isn't just subversively bad.
He's rude to everybody, frankly. He's not very nice to the technicians that service the robot.
He goes out and he gets a second robot and he is emotionally abusive toward Annie and frankly, in some instances it's difficult to watch or read those scenes because in a way it feels like you said, Lisa, this is a stand in for what happens to people in real life. You know, there are people out there that unfortunately suffer from abusive relationships and this it was so vivid and very obvious and I think what's hard about it to read but also very compelling because Annie is a very interesting character that you want to keep reading her story. But she's very much alone.
He doesn't take her out of the home, the apartment, very often, if at all, and it's a call to action, if you will, people that are in Annie's shoes when their world is so limited. And I wanted to mention two other pseudo characters, which are part of the company's offerings to help these Al robots be more human-like is to give them a phone and to link them with Al chatbots that they're told one is their friend and one is their cousin.
And they get to talk to them on the phone as though it's a real conversation, but on the other end, it's it's just an Al bot and you know, it's fascinating because Annie develops such an attachment to them and really looks forward to talking to them and but they can't actually do anything for her.
They can't intervene and they you know, they can't advocate for her because they're not real and that to me added another layer of the story, which I really sat with.
Yeah, and you brought up the other robot that Doug gets at one point, who is an out of the box version. And we get to see the sort of standard mode and then we get to see some progression with that robot too. But it's yeah, it's just it's really interesting to see that kind of, you know, going into this situation naively and then gradually becoming aware of what's going on.
Like that's sort of happens with the robots learning progression in a way that mirrors real life.
Right. And even if you were to argue that Doug sees them as simply robots, I think that his abuse of behavior and the ways that he goes about it almost inherently recognize that they have a certain degree of identity in the behavior and kind of stripping what little identity and autonomy there is away and using that as a lever in his behavior. It's difficult to read at times, I mean, quite frankly.
I agree. And the other thing that strikes me about Doug the worm is how he feels like a victim at the same time.
He says in many parts of the book that he's embarrassed because Annie is a robot and he can't take her to meet his parents or his family or to a vacation or even to the ballpark.
Because what would people think if I brought a robot girlfriend? And so he turns himself into this victim of, well, look what you made me do. I can't have a normal girlfriend because you're a robot.
And these things are so separate from one another in reality, but he conflates them in such a way that he centers himself in this abuse as some victim. That's the only word I can come up with.
And blames her for every time he feels bad about himself.
And when things go awry, he doesn't take
responsibility for anything, really. There were moments that I was very nervous for Annie, and it was a little bit scary to read that whole, look what you've made me do mentality. So up close, it was an eye opener.
And then at the same time, I had this nostalgic feeling of Klara and the Sun, because it felt as though Klara is obviously not in the same situation. She's a child and her quote unquote owner is also a child, and it's a completely different plot. But the idea of a machine continuing to learn and developing these very real feelings on how the world works and navigating the world and maintaining faith and kind of believing in her own abilities was, I found myself comparing the two a little bit.
But also believing in people and trusting people who didn't deserve it. There was definitely some of that in Klara too.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, another one that Lisa and I were chatting on, we were trying to remember which book it was in. But in The Mountain and in the Sea, it's a relatively small bit in it, but there's the idea of.5s, which are kind of Al...
Companions.
Companions that are, they're specifically 5s because they're kind of, what you want in the other person is to meet your needs and not have any needs of their own.
And definitely got that vibe in terms of what Doug wanted out of Annie is. Wanted her to be exactly what he needs.
And even as, like I said, I think he certainly never recognized it, but I think his behavior recognized that she had some degree of identity and personality herself. And that became one of the things that rubbed against him because that was not what he wanted. That enraged him.
It enraged him that she had needs beyond what he said they were.
I don't want to challenge that thought because I completely agree and I wholeheartedly do not like Doug as I've repeatedly mentioned this. But I think it's also interesting that the author chose to set the story with a robot and not with a person, a human, because then Doug could make the argument that you've laid out earlier, Scott, that he sees her as a robot. He sees Annie the way the three of us might look at our microwave.
This is just a functional tool. The function happens to be this person, this robot is my girlfriend, which I do not think that about my microwave.
He's abusive, but to me, he could make the argument that it's akin to blowing into your Nintendo cartridge to get it to work and you're frustrated and you're banging on a computer or a remote control to get it to turn on. I think that it's very clever that the author decided, no, I'm not going to make this a human relationship. I'm going to put that layer on it so that people have even more to chew on.
Yeah, I agree because there is kind of an overlap.
Again, I think you can analyze it from both perspectives. So like you said, I think you can look at the relationship aspects.
And as you said, the fact that it's a robot gives it a little bit of a different dimension. And then again, like we talked about conversely, I think even if Doug was the nicest person in the entire world, there would still be some questions there in terms of again, emerging identity because there's some creepiness too in terms of the corporation that, you know, to some degree, you know, certainly some of the individuals have presumably seen enough here to know that Doug is maybe not the best individual out there, but because it's advancing their robotic algorithm or whatever, you know, he's their favorite person and they're ready to, you know, ready to advance that as it goes and to advance their models. That's right.
Another book this reminded me of was The Stepford Wives. It was by Ira Levin from 1972. It was made into a movie in 1975, but there's nobody that hasn't heard of it probably that's listening to this because it's become a cultural shorthand for someone acting artificially perfect.
It's more horror than sci-fi because an entire town full of men decide that it's a good idea to kill their wives and replace them with robots who will act more like the ideal housewife than real women would. And there's definitely echoes of that here. You know, why can't you just fill this role and not have any needs of your own is definitely what that book was about and also what's going on here with the dynamic of Annie and Doug.
Yeah, I think that's right. They can never be a quote unquote couple because he can never accept her as his equal.
Right.
And unfortunately for him, he is devious in some of his, let's call it secret keeping. He's manipulative and I don't want to say she's innocent because I think Annie keeps some secrets of her own. And her internal monologue, I don't think is ever really on display for Doug, so I don't think either of them know each other as well as they believe that they do.
Although she has a little bit better sense because she can sense his quote unquote displeasure rating and she frequently monitors it to ensure that it's at an acceptable level. And she actually gets a little bit anxious when it gets too high. But I think that the book itself is very good at navigating that creepiness factor that is similar to The Stepford Wives.
Yeah.
I'm curious what you both thought of the best friend.
On the phone?
No, Doug's friend.
Oh, he's a creep too. But I mean, you know, different way maybe, but still a creep.
I wasn't really sure what his purpose was in the book other than to advance the plot.
I think it introduces that initial tension. But I think it also, his behavior and Doug's interaction with him as well, and kind of again, that status seeking or fear of inferiority and whatnot reinforces Doug's personality, if you want to call it that.
I think it maybe also pushes back on this, I don't know, this sort of like, well, Doug is just one bad seed possible argument. You are the company you keep. Well, but also the stop saying not all men kind of thing.
I mean, I think The Stepford Wives was saying the same thing. It was like, if you are put in a situation where society has made it acceptable for you to behave this way, the possibility of letting that side of you out becomes much higher. And this sort of like rape culture idea that, well, this is, I mean, this guy's in the room with a sex bot.
What's he going to do? Right? Yeah.
I don't know. I think that's...
I think that's right.
Maybe where that character is going.
I think that's right. I had been thinking about it and wondering what his role was in the book, but hearing you say that, that sounds very plausible and reasonable. Also, without him, the story doesn't take a turn, if you will.
Right.
I think it starts to pick up momentum once he visits.
Yeah. Quite early. It's like right at the beginning.
But yes, that sets off a lot of the chain of action. I also thought it was interesting, again, going back to my favorite, Klara and the Sun, that in Klara and the Sun, her energy source was, spoiler, the Sun. But for this, it was so low tech for such an advanced robot, that she basically was plugged into a charging dock, and had to be plugged into an electrical outlet to be able to recharge herself.
And I thought that was fascinating how, on the one hand, this is probably the most advanced technology ever. And then on the other hand, they just made such weird decisions on a charging dock, and I couldn't help but wonder, did they do that because they wanted to show her tethered to the home?
I mean, it sounds like they would...
Meaning it's symbolism.
It would be a deliberate... Well, and a deliberate design decision, like within the world of the book, a deliberate desion derision to limit the hot's autonomy
Yeah
Right. Right.
Right, because it is then difficult for a bot to go off on their own without having access to power.
And because they look so incredibly human-like, that's a way that you can... They can't just live as if they're human indefinitely.
That's right. Yeah.
But if you were really developing technology like this, I agree, it's an interesting design...
Yeah.
I mean, it would be a wireless charge at this point.
Yeah. At the very least, it would be contactless, right?
Right.
I like how we're talking as though we're somehow building these robots on the side of this podcast. It's like, oh yeah, Scott, put in the wireless charging.
Yeah, exactly.
I did think one reason that I love that detail and I agree with everything that you said, you both said about it, but the other lovely thing about it is it pulls the technology back just a little bit so that in five years, this book won't feel dated. The way, sometimes you'll read a book and they'll reference Twitter and you think, oh, that feels dated now. That one little detail will actually keep it old enough that it won't feel outdated.
Interesting.
I'm curious, who would you recommend this to?
I mean, I think this is another one that has appeal both to the sci-fi crowd and to the literary fiction crowd. I think you can read it either way and both at the same time.
I agree with that. The only thing I would add is there are a number of trigger warnings or content warnings that I would certainly recommend people that feel like they could be sensitive to it. Certainly look those up ahead of time because I think Scott, you mentioned that there were moments that are very difficult to read and those moments are not few and far between.
No, no. I would agree with that same kind of caution as well.
Yeah.
I have to say another book that I kept thinking of, a recent read of mine that I kept thinking of while I was reading this one was Know My Name by Chanel Miller, who was originally anonymous victim of Brock Turner, who wrote a really excellent book about the war.
It's a very powerful memoir.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, talking about how this book has, you know, draws very much on real life experiences that happened to women for real.
There's, you know, I definitely kept thinking about her while I was reading it and her observations about, you know, ways that women's bodies are treated by society.
Right. And again, from the little glimpses that we get, it's not like Doug treats human women much better.
Right. Yes. That does seem clear.
Yes.
Any thoughts on the narration?
You know, I read the print version.
Right.
So the narration was in my head and I thought I did a great job. No, I am actually curious as to what you both thought about the narration because I have not listened to this book and I'm very curious to hear your thoughts.
I mean, I enjoyed the narration and I thought it did a good balance of, you know, I don't think at any point in time in the narrative is robotic per se in her either inner monologue or exterior, but there is a little bit of, you know, development throughout and I think that's reflected well or at the very least doesn't detract from what you're getting in the narrative.
Right. And I think she does a good job with the kind of like artificial cheeriness that is what's required of her programming.
Right.
And then also with portraying that what's behind that isn't, is more nuanced than that. Yeah. It's not what's on the outside.
I agree with that.
In a way, this book also shows how Al could be liberating because I think Annie just by way of developing her own thoughts, she moves in the direction of advocating for herself in many instances.
So I thought that that felt positive.
Yeah. Yeah. I did say, without saying anything about what the ending is, I will say I thought it was pretty satisfying.
I agree with that and I think given some of the negative aspects of that, I think that's good to mention just so the people are like, why would I read this?
Here's why the other reason people would read this. I think the writing is really compelling. The pace is great.
It moves at a pace where when I was not reading it, I was thinking, oh gosh, I want to pick this book back up again because the plot is the plot and the characters are the characters, but somehow the writing really pulled me in. I felt very invested in Annie's story and I think that's the reason I would recommend it to people.
I would agree with that.
Yep, I would too.
Any final thoughts?
Doug is a worm.
Here, here.
Listeners, if you'd like to pick up a copy of Annie Bot or any of the other audio books discussed today, please see the show notes at narratedpodcast.com. Some of the links in the show notes do include affiliate links.
When you follow these links to purchase the audio book, it helps support the podcast and doesn't impact the cost of the audio book to you.
If you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe or share it with a friend. Please also consider giving us a review on Apple Podcast or Podchaser. You can connect with the show via email at narratedpodcast at gmail.com or on Instagram at @narratedpodcast.
Thank you for listening.