Service Model
Task Item No. 1: Become Self-Aware Meet Charles™, the latest in robot servant technology. Programmed to undertake the most menial household chores, Charles is loyal, efficient and logical to a fault - that is, until a rather large fault causes him to murder his owner. Understandably perplexed, Charles finds himself without a master and, in a society reliant on artificial labour, worthless. Fleeing the household, he enters a world he never knew existed. Here, an age-old human hierarchy is disintegrating, and a robot ecosystem devoted to its well-being is struggling to find a purpose. Charles must face new challenges, illogical tasks and a cast of irrational characters. He'll discover that all it takes to overcome the limits of your programming is a nudge. But can he help fix the world, or is it too badly broken?
Stats for nerds
7recommend
12mentions
11people
2024–2026years
67% recommend25% neutral8% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I just finished reading Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky [1], a really timely novel that deals with lots of open ended questions of AI, robots, humanity, control, self determination, and so on. Really recommend it if you're into these kinds of things.
> Premise Imagine that AI frontier progress stops as of 1 September 2026: AI becomes faster and cheaper, but it never becomes superhuman or improves considerably across the board.
I absolutely love this premise. I wrote a comment a few days ago about this very thing. I've had this "revelation" in early 2024, when using a small local model, that even if models never improve, I'd still have a few years of discovering all the things I could do with the models.
Really cool, hopefully we get some interesting and not overwhelmingly pessimistic stories out of this project. There's enough cynicism and negativity in the world. We could use some funny takes on everyone using openclaw2040 ran by fable. Shenanigans galore.
[1] - https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/195790861-service-mod...
- Even as a writer of optimistic sci-fi myself, it's very difficult for me to come up with more than a handful of examples that are less than ten years old.
Becky Chambers is probably the single best young author working in this genre today. She's got two great series, one that begins with "A Psalm for the Wild-Built", and one which begins with "The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet".
I'd argue Andy Weir's "Project Hail Mary" is hopeful sci-fi, and the movie adaptation was great. You could perhaps put Adrian Tchaikovsky's "Elder Race" and "Service Model" in there too, since both are pretty hopeful in overall outlook. And if you broaden to include fantasy, Travis Baldree's "Legend and Lattes" series is very much in the same vein as Becky Chambers.
It seems like hopeful sci-fi movies and TV are more common, like the recent "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds".
Perhaps the recent troubles the world is undergoing will lead to more light-hearted fare to distract us? One can only hope.
- I read Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky recently and I think it takes more-or-less takes direct inspiration from this story (and the poem) with modern aesthetics. I liked it, it’s more dark-humorous than strictly bleak, but still pretty bleak as you read between the lines.
- Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Service Model is a good look at this IMO.
- I don't think I've been disappointed by anything from Adrian Tchaikovsky, tbh. Alien Clay and Service Model are also great.
- the best author-read audiobook I've listened to recently has been Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky[0]. He did a really good job and I would never have guessed it was the author himself. As you say, it's a very different and difficult job.
