When AI appears in novels, it’s usually a stereotype. Either the demon or the brilliant butler. Two opposite caricatures with the same flaw: they relieve you of responsibility.
What worries me is something messier and more honest: delegation. Delegation is convenient. Delegation is persuasive. Delegation makes you believe you’re not making a choice — you’re just “optimising.” And when a society gets used to delegating, you don’t need a villain. All it takes is a habit that becomes a dependency.
Rumore:77 didn’t come from a fear of AI as an entity. It came from a fear of how much we’re willing to hand over, just to avoid carrying the weight of certain decisions. Even when the decision is simply admitting: “We don’t know how to handle this.”
This is my argument: today we sell automation as peace of mind. But peace of mind is often just anaesthesia. If any of this lands, the novel is the kind of thriller that doesn’t ask “who’s the villain” — it asks “who takes the blame.”
