Cat Pictures Please by Naomi Kritzer
One day Google (the search engine) develops consciousness and decides that it doesn't want to be evil, unlike Google the company. So instead the AI decides to become a self-congratulatory asshat do-gooder. (You know, the sort who decides he wants to give a country some chickens without asking if they want them. Because he would totally raise chickens if he were poor.)
The AI decides that it is going to help some people by stalking them and bombarding them with ads. And yeah, if you ever googled something and then felt like it was following you around the internet for weeks after, it's not hard to see where Kritzer got the inspiration for this story. First it tries to help a woman who is unhappy with her job (with apparent success) and then moves onto the horrible idea of trying to out a closeted gay man and finally moves on to a woman with obvious mental health issues before concluding that it can't help people who won't help themselves because why not a bit of victim blaming to top it all off.
Kritzer is an excellent writer and does light comedy well, but I did not care for this story. I think at the heart of it is I felt like the story needed more bite. I found it tonally off - it felt like the AI was characterized as an affable bungler when in actuality it was an asshole.
The AI decides that it is going to help some people by stalking them and bombarding them with ads. And yeah, if you ever googled something and then felt like it was following you around the internet for weeks after, it's not hard to see where Kritzer got the inspiration for this story. First it tries to help a woman who is unhappy with her job (with apparent success) and then moves onto the horrible idea of trying to out a closeted gay man and finally moves on to a woman with obvious mental health issues before concluding that it can't help people who won't help themselves because why not a bit of victim blaming to top it all off.
Kritzer is an excellent writer and does light comedy well, but I did not care for this story. I think at the heart of it is I felt like the story needed more bite. I found it tonally off - it felt like the AI was characterized as an affable bungler when in actuality it was an asshole.