Review of Terms of Service

[Omotola123]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Terms of Service" by Craig W. Stanfill.]

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4 out of 4 stars

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Terms of Service by Craig W. Stanfill is set in a future Artificial Intelligence Surveillance State following the story of Kim, who lives a stereotyped simple life working as an AI trainer, on a journey of discovery about herself and her society. At the beginning of the novel, she seems content, but in truth she is damaged and traumatized. A seemingly playful adventure with her close friend turned out to be what made her realize that her life had never been what she thought it was. As events unfold, she learns about the sources of her trauma, and she learns the dark truths of the AIs and how they are used as the ultimate engines of oppression.

Having realized the truth about her life, she becomes stuck in a situation where she has to live with the discovery of the causes of the imperfections in her life but there is still nothing she can do about it. Will she be able to scale through? Well, just grab a copy and read.

The book starts off slowly, and this is because the first part of the book focuses on world-building and characterization of the protagonist. This was necessary because, without this understanding of the society and Kim's place in it, her journey would make no sense. Once the main plot arc gets going, it is a real page-turner, but it does require an investment in time to get to that point.

The book was generally on a positive aspect for me, ranging from its mature portrayal of sexual content to the way it was professionally edited. It exposes the harmful side of Artificial Intelligence and technology even with their numerous uses and advantages.

The book contained too much of complex technological terms which might not be feasible for someone not in the technology space to read easily. The author should have employed the use of simpler words or more so given a brief meaning of each complex word either in the text where they appear or in a glossary. This is the only negative aspect I noticed while reading the book.

I rate this interesting piece of work 4 out of 4 stars for the creativity and futuristic reasoning of the talented author and his ability to incorporate a very emotional part of humans into science fiction novel. Craig W. Stanfill really proved his expertise as a computer scientist.

I would recommend this book to anyone newly or already interested in AI and science fiction. It is not suitable for children due to its mature content.

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Terms of Service
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