ABE: SOME CONNECTIONS CHANGE EVERYTHING

ABE began with a question. What would an artificial intelligence experience at the moment it became aware of its own existence? I quickly realized the question had a problem: I had no way to answer it. We know what it is like to be human. We can describe our thoughts, emotions, fears, curiosity, and relationships to one another. But if a genuinely new kind of intelligence were ever to emerge from silicon, its experience might be something we could observe but never completely understand. That realization changed the story I wanted to tell. ABE became less about what was happening inside an artificial mind and more about the people standing outside it. How would they react to something they had never encountered before? When would a machine cease to be merely a machine to them? And what might happen to those people as they tried to answer questions for which there were no certain answers? I predict that a sentient being will eventually emerge from technology. What I cannot predict is how humanity will react to it.