Is that just... uh really fortunate for for this book or how did how did you um how did you get on this topic that suddenly is so prescient and important to all of us

yeah you know that is a such an interesting question i um i really lucked into the timing because the book originally had nothing to do with ai it was a very it was the same premise the very analog the families in the car are And everybody's responsible for this awful accident.

And, you know, whether they're like on their phones or on a computer or getting in a fight or whatever like that.

Originally, there was a fight between the two daughters.

Charlie's on his phone.

The dad is on his computer.

Laura, I can't remember what Laura and I was doing in the original version, but all of them are somehow responsible.

And I'm afraid a whole lot more of this is going on than we know or would be comfortable with if we knew.

Yeah

... are very worried about these technologies coming in and replacing the patient, slow, laborious artwork that humans have been doing for many, many generations, millennia in some cases.

Um, uh, certainly in the case of writing.

So I think there's a, you know, we're at this, I wouldn't call it a tipping point, I would call it just a massive kind of crunch of, uh, you know, aesthetic argument.

And it's, for me, I'm less interested in it as a participant.

I'm not, I'm not someone who uses AI in my writing, as I am as an observer.

And I'm, I, you know, as, as an artist in a few different mediums, you know, I've been a very active musician for, for a long time.

Yeah.

Okay, for those who haven't read Culpability yet, would you mind telling them a little more about what it's about?

Yeah.

So the premise of Culpability, um, is about how, how a family gets through an accident, something, something bad that happens to them.

They're in a, um, a car on the way to a lacrosse tournament.

They get in a really awful accident, and the people in the oncoming car are killed.

A few members of the family are, um, are injured, but nobody super seriously.

But the twist is that the car is in self-driving mode.

Mm

I wonder how much input you had about the cover, because I chose the book basically because of the cover, but I know authors often don't have anything to say about the

cover.

You know, so basically what happens when you're in trade publishing, maybe six months before publication, your editor sends you and your agent an email with a JPEG attached and it says, We're so thrilled to tell you, here is the cover that we have come up with for culpability.

Everyone here loves it.

Our sales team loves it.

Our sales reps love it.

Our publicity and marketing teams, everyone in editorial and in the C-suite, we all love it.

hat.

It may have changed since you wrote the book.

Yeah, so I see the book as, uh, maybe t- trying to do two things.

One, as you said, it's a contemporary family drama about, uh, just something really bad that happens to this family.

They get in this, uh, bad car accident while they're driving the family minivan over to a lacrosse tournament in Delaware.

Um, but the van is in autonomous mode or self-driving mode and, um, their son Charlie, kind of a charismatic lacrosse star, he's at the wheel, um, but he's not driving.

And then the dad, Noah, is distractedly writing on his laptop.

He's trying to finish a legal memo.

That is their argument.

I think you do an incredible job of challenging the reader with the- the- the moral and ethical dilemmas around artificial intelligence, and I read that you spent three years researching this book, and in that research, who did you talk to and what surprised you?

I talked to people who work on the ethics of AI.

I have a friend in the law school at UVA who works on algorithmic bias, I talked to her.

I talked to some lawyers at a few tech companies.

I talked to people working with the machinery of AI, um, and I also just did a lot of reading, um, as I do for- for all of my research.

And I- I suppose one of the biggest surprises for me, well, there's a few, um...

One is that everybody that you talk to in AI, and you've probably already had this experience, has a PDOOM number.

So, question for you is, with privilege, how did you use that to kind of shape the decisions that people could make, um, or ca- got to avoid in their lives?