Although it is professedly not about AI, Klara does have that technology at its heart, embodied by the narrator. For me, the novel is somewhat undermined by its unconvincing portrayal of AI: Klara develops a superstitious faith in the sun, her power source, and blames “the Cooting machine” (a tarmac machine?) for Josie’s illness, which is actually caused by her mother’s decision to have her “lifted”, genetically modified to increase intelligence. At the same time, it is proposed that Klara could tutor mechanical engineering prodigy Rick, Josie’s neighbour and boyfriend: what would she have taught him about the solar system and asphalt, we wonder? Strangely, Klara is a technologically disconnected being, she develops alone through her own uniquely empathetic senses: she does not update, she does not seem to access the internet…
The way Klara is ultimately treated by her humans echoes the way that we treat ‘the other’ in our societies. Josie’s relationship with her AF reminded me of the first time a white south African told me the story of the beloved black nanny who brought her up. Moved by the account, I asked: What happened to her? Well, obviously, when the family didn’t need her anymore, that sent her back to her, then, Tribal Trust Land. Klara is similarly forgotten, more an outmoded laptop or mobile phone discarded than a lost friend.
There are many avenues in Klara that are frustratingly unexplored: the politics of the dystopian society that we are given glimpses of (disaffected communities of humans who have lost their jobs and status to AI, for instance); the role of gender in AI: AFs come in boy and girl versions, the girls seemingly retaining more female sensibilities… But how? Why?
Apparently, Klara was conceived as a children’s book and it certainly retains the feeling of a fairy tale through the language and mood of the writing. Klara’s “slow fade”, alone in a technology graveyard, is moving and mythical. As an exploration of human love and identity, Klara is a stimulating read. As sci-fi there are many better explorations of AI, androids and robots: Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Bladerunner), for instance, I Robot, or the excellent BBC drama series Humans.