Artificial Intelligence and the Human Experience, my review of Klara and the Sun

May 2, 2021
5 min read

Hello everyone! Happy beginning of May!

You may have noticed that I have not been posting much in April, and I will admit that the month went by much faster than I expected. Between day to day life and the rush of assignments / end of the semester, I have not had time to read or write much. But I am back, my schedule is a little bit less crowded, and hopefully, I will be back to posting every week – plus some really cool project that will hopefully start this month or the next.

One of the few books that I managed to read in April was Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro.

Klara and the Sun is set in an alternate version of our world - or a potential future - in which people can buy an Artificial Friend (AF) to keep them company. Klara is an AF who is very observant and aware of the humans around her and their feelings, which she finds fascinating. When Josie picks her to be her AF, she navigates the intricacies of human life and emotions, as well as the complex relationships between the characters.

I first picked up this book because of the title, which I loved - and it also helped that I have a friend called Clara who loves the sun. It was also highly recommended online and I had heard of Kazuo Ishiguro many times before. It felt like a good place to start as this was his latest release.

I really wanted to enjoy this book. I think that because of the hype around it and around the author, I was expecting a lot from it, maybe hoping that it would change my mind about SF as it is a genre that I really struggle to enjoy.

Many people have described Ishiguro's books as Science Fiction that feel very human and real, which, for me, meant getting attached to characters, and a reality not so different from ours. I supposed I was only half right. While the world that they live in is very similar from ours, I did not really connect with any of the characters, and ended up not really caring about the plot as it relied heavily on the reader's empathy for Klara and Josie.

Now that the book has been out for a few weeks, I will admit that I have seen many mixed reviews, and, admittedly, this might not be Ishiguro's best work - meaning that I might pick up one of his more beloved novels before I make a full opinion on his writing style. For now, I will try to give a fuller review and more developed thoughts on this.

The difficulty of the outsider main character

“I wish him the very best. All I’m saying is that there are all kinds of ways to lead a successful life.”

Throughout the novel, Ishiguro tries to include observations on relationships and behaviour, possibly to get the readers to reflect on their own lives. To do so, he uses a main character – Klara – who is an outsider to this human world that we know. This is a technique that is often used by authors to criticize and reflect on humanity and the society they live in, by bringing a character who is outside the norm, one who does not belong or was not born in this society. Klara, as an AF, is a good example of the outsider character. As the story is from her perspective, we get to see our lives described by someone who might find them abnormal, or who can bring an objective point of view on situations and behaviours.

Ishiguro really manages to show Klara’s observations and the evolution in her behaviour and reactions because of the time she spends observing Josie and her family. And Klara’s naivety and hopefulness is sometimes very endearing, and even sometimes funny as her observations and deductions can sometimes be a distorted version of the truth.

However, I also found that it was sometimes confusing, and would take me out of the story. Because Klara was not fully aware of the things happening, and did not know the names for everything, she sometimes used other words, or described things without ever giving their names, which made it hard to understand the descriptions. It was also hard to feel any kind of sympathy for her – though maybe it was the point, that we cannot feel empathy for someone who is not a human being but rather an artificial robot. In any case, it made it hard to focus on the story and care about what was happening. Because of that, I felt like the book was a bit too long and was sometimes dragging on a little bit too much.

Can we recreate human emotions?

“There was something very special, but it wasn't inside Josie. It was inside those who loved her.”

One of the book’s main themes is whether or not we can synthesize the human experience and create AIs that feel and think like humans.

Throughout the novel, Klara is asked to copy Josie and recreate her behaviour. For some of the characters, it is very important to see Klara’s ability to observe and recreate certain speech patterns or physical characteristics. However, for other characters, her presence if disturbing, and her purpose as an AF is frowned upon.

For a Science Fiction novel, this seems to be a rather typical theme, and while many SF books and movies will try to warn the readers against artificial intelligence and its capacity to understand and recreate human behaviour, mostly the worst part of humanity, leading to war and destruction, this novel focuses on the other side of this question. No matter how hard Klara tries, or how empathetic and understanding she is, it is impossible for her to completely imitate and replace Josie, or to recreate human experience for that matter. She understands that even though she has a good intuition and is really aware of what emotions and relationships are, she can never artificially copy them.

As I have said at the beginning of this review, this ended up being a rather disappointing read for me. While I enjoyed the main themes and ideas conveyed, I found that I was bored through most of the story. If you are looking for a good SF novel, I would recommend trying something else. In any case, I will still try to read Ishiguro’s other books to see if they are all similar to this one, or if I was unlucky by starting with this one. In any case, I will keep you updated on what I decide to read.

If you have read this novel, or would like to recommend another Ishiguro novel, I would love to hear from you! You can leave a comment here, or find me on Instagram to tell me your thoughts!