Stacey Abrams discussed her latest novel, Coded Justice, on NBC News Now.
Abrams’ book, published Tuesday by Doubleday, follows former U.S. Supreme Court clerk Avery Keene, who works as an internal investigator at a prestigious law firm. Keene looks into one of the firm’s clients, an artificial intelligence company, after a series of disturbing anomalies. A critic for Kirkus didn’t care for the book, writing, “Abrams’ AI is no HAL.” It is her third novel featuring Keene, after While Justice Sleeps and Rogue Justice.
Anchor Morgan Radford asked Abrams, the former minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives, what inspired the character of Keene.
“Avery Keene was born out of a story I wanted to tell almost a decade ago about the Supreme Court, and what it feels like to have responsibility but no power,” Abrams said. “This [novel] is about what happens when the right intentions turn dastardly.”
Radford brought up the incident last weekend in which Grok, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, posted a series of antisemitic remarks and proclaimed itself “MechaHitler.”
“What we saw happen over the weekend was about having a language model that was trained on epithets and hatred and venom,” Abrams said. “That’s what happens. When the technology learns the wrong thing, it produces the wrong thing.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
