THE GENIUS PLAGUE doesn’t come out until October, but I’ve just finished writing a new novel (yes, another one!), and I’m excited about it, so I’m going to talk about it anyway, even though it will be a while before it comes out.  (The traditional publishing business is slow.)  THREE LAWS LETHAL is a novel about self-driving cars, machine learning algorithms, and the development of artificial intelligence.  It’s a very near-future science fiction story, drawing from the latest technological advancements in machine learning algorithms, and exploring the promise of self-driving cars and the related legal and ethical issues.  It grapples with the meaning of consciousness and intelligence, and is my attempt to give serious consideration to the question of intelligent artificial life from both a technological and philosophical perspective.  How could it actually occur?  And how might our current technology lead there?

THREE LAWS LETHAL is a science fiction thriller about the life-and-death choices smart machines will make in our very near future.  It follows two rival entrepreneurs developing fleets of self-driving cars.  As they compete to dominate the market, their personal enmity pushes them to attack each other’s reputations, hack each other’s cars, and develop ever more sophisticated algorithms to keep their customers safe.  The result?  Intelligent computers that excel at using all available data to determine which humans should live, and which should die.