Review of Culpability by Bruce Holsinger

Culpability shapes questions around artificial intelligence--and societal and individual responsibility for it--around imperfect characters who have drifted apart and must now recognize each other's fallibility, whether through sacrificing or trying to protect each other.

The Cassidy-Shaws are riding in their family's autonomous minivan when it crashes into another vehicle. Seventeen-year-old Charlie, the twins, their father Noah, and their mother Lorelei, an AI leader, are all shaken by the accident.

But they're also all harboring secrets, and there's more to the circumstances surrounding the accident than meets the eye.

Charlie, a promising lacrosse player headed to UNC in the fall, who was behind the wheel, tries to navigate a police investigation, guided by his father. Then, oddly, a tech mogul enters the story whose past intersected with Lorelei's, and they're both behaving oddly. Meanwhile the twins aren't sharing all they know. As each of the characters copes with feelings of guilt and responsibility, their family is shaken to the core.

Culpability explores accountability and questions around the use of AI, making them personal, life-and-death, and far-reaching. Faulted characters reckon with their own imperfect motivations alongside the repercussions of human-created--but complicated, self-evolving--AI. Mistakes are made in life, Holsinger reminds us, and we must cope with the consequences of decisions, carelessness, overconfidence, or merely chance. But inserting a layer of artificial intelligence on top of this dramatically complicates things. Here, AI-directed decision-making and results call into question stark black-and-white senses of situations that are often far more gray.

The relationship between Noah and Lorelei seemed to have spiraled away from them before we enter their story. Their dynamic showed itself to be more tangled and nuanced than it felt originally, and I was intrigued by watching their shifts, accommodations, and grace for each other.

I didn't care deeply about the characters in Culpability, but I was interested in the lavish setting for the tech mogul, the family's attempt to circle up at the waterfront rental, the exploration of wealth and its ability to shape a narrative, and the protagonists' sometimes misguided attempts to protect each other.

The pace of the story is swift, and Holsinger keeps the reader uncomfortable as the story draws to a close, with plenty of messy, imperfect resolutions shaped by money, politics, carefully crafted realities, and legal punch.

More from This Author

Bruce Holsinger is also the author of The Gifted School, The Displacements, and works of nonfiction.

You might also be interested in my Bossy reviews of these other novels about AI.