157. How to Craft AI and Robot Characters in Your Fiction

“ So I haven't yet pulled in any ethical or moral dilemmas that would be interesting, maybe in a future story.” - Beth Barany

In “How to Craft AI and Robot Characters in Your Fiction” ****Beth Barany discusses how to create compelling AI and robot characters with unique traits to engage readers. She is joined by her husband, Ezra Barany, also an author and writing teacher, and together they share the benefits of joining their mastermind program for science fiction and fantasy writers.

Content Warning: brief mention of suicide

ABOUT EZRA BARANY

Ezra Barany loves riveting readers with thrillers, but by order of the Department of Motor Vehicles he must place a warning on every book cover, “Do not read while driving.” His first two books in The Torah Codes series were award-winning international bestsellers. The second two books in the 4-book series wowed readers too! In his free time, he has eye-opening discussions on the art of writing novels with his wife and book coach Beth Barany. A high school physics teacher, Ezra lives in Oakland with his beloved wife and two cats working on the next book in The Torah Codes series. Ezra, not the cats. For a free short story in The Torah Codes series, “The Mourner’s Kaddish,” do please go to http://www.thetorahcodes.com/.

ABOUT BETH BARANY

Beth Barany, an award-winning fantasy and science fiction novelist, teaches novelists how to write, edit, and publish their books as a coach, teacher, consultant, and developmental editor.

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• SHOW CO-PRODUCTION + NOTES by Kerry-Ann McDade

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Transcript

157. AI and Robot Characters in Fiction

Introduction and Hosts

BETH BARANY: Hey everyone. Welcome back to, or welcome to How to Write the Future. I'm your host Beth Barany, and next to me. 

EZRA BARANY: I am Ezra Barany 

BETH BARANY: Is my husband, Ezra Barany. We are both writers. I'm a creativity coach for writers and editor, and Ezra and I teach science fiction and fantasy writers how to take their manuscript to publication. I'll tell you a little bit more about that later. 

[00:25] Today's Topic: AI and Robot Characters

BETH BARANY: Today, we have a special topic for you on AI and robot characters in fiction. We did a poll recently, and this was one of the most favorite topics chosen. So Ezra's gonna ask me questions, I'm gonna answer them, and stay tuned to a little bit more about how we work with writers.

We'll talk to you about that at the end. All right, Ezra, take it away. 

[00:46] Creating Compelling Robot Characters

EZRA BARANY: Great, so the first question is you know how you wake up and you find out you're a robot, and then you're like, I really want to tell my story as a robot. How can you, now that you're a robot, convey that experience in a compelling way?

BETH BARANY: Yeah, 

EZRA BARANY: Are robots compelling? Are AI characters compelling? How can you do that? 

BETH BARANY: Yeah, what a great question. So I read a novel recently that did this beautifully. It's called Activation Degradation by Marina J. Lostetter. Oh my God. It was so amazing. So the main character is a robot. The entire story is told from this automaton, this robot's perspective. And what she did so beautifully is she gave this robot character feelings, a goal, a very clear goal, very clear conflicts impeding that goal, the ability to learn, and the ability to notice how they were different from the other robots around them. 

And so their goal competed, their personal goal, like they had a programming that seemed to compete with some stuff happening around them, which created the amazing conflicts in the story. And because they also had the ability to learn when they got new information that contradicted the old information,then the character had room to grow and make choices and change. 

The robot had many of the characteristics that we humans have -to learn, grow, and change, and to have a goal and to have agency to deal with the conflicts. Designing a robot character is no different than designing a human character, in my opinion.

Except with a robot, you're gonna have probably very strict programming that is gonna be explicit usually to, to the robot themselves.

So that's my guess. And that seems to be how this author did it. 

EZRA BARANY: Very cool. 

BETH BARANY: I also wanna bring up another example, which is in, they did it in the Han Solo movie in, Star Wars. 

EZRA BARANY: Uhhuh.

BETH BARANY: And it's also in the Andor series as well where the robots get to have more of a voice. They want things, and that puts them in conflict with other people. Uh, and, and now we have a character who may be very good, like way better than a human ever could be at certain things, but they still have individual agency and individual desires.

And I think that's what makes these robots really interesting. 

EZRA BARANY: Hmm, That's wonderful. 

[03:11] Unique Traits of AI Characters

EZRA BARANY: What makes an AI character feel more authentic instead of like just a human shaped being with mechanical parts? Unique traits and contradictions? 

BETH BARANY: Yeah. Oh, okay. I didn't really talk about the unique traits. So yeah. One of the things that makes an AI character, which we can differentiate from a robot, I'd like to talk about AI versus robot in a second.

EZRA BARANY: mmm, okay. 

BETH BARANY: But having unique traits. I'm thinking of this robot in Han Solo. She wanted her individual rights and she did some things that made her stand out oh, there's some robots in The Clone wars.

Roger, Roger. 

EZRA BARANY: mm-hmm. 

BETH BARANY: And say, right, and, and like, they all seem the same, but what makes the robot I'm thinking of, and I wish I could remember her name in Han Solo, is that she has a unique voice. She speaks differently than, she's not just saying, being a robot, we call it, you know, think of C3PO.

And C3POs had a personality. Now we didn't get to know other droids, like C3PO in Star Wars, but C3PO had such a certain kind of humanity, a certain attitude.

So what is gonna make your robot unique is gonna be attitude, the way they respond and interact. Maybe they do some things that humans find unusual.

Maybe they have a certain programming, certain protocols that are going to surprise the humans, and so surprise us. That's one of the things that also make us remember these creatures, these creatures, these robots. 

EZRA BARANY: Yeah. That's really good. And I love that advice of surprise. 'Cause I, I did write up a, an AI robot character in one of my stories and she was just supposed to do the chores and do all the household tasks. But she became so sad with the way she was treated, that she wrote a poem about her sadness expressing herself, and she took her own life, so to speak, and that shocked the owner, if we can call him that, 'cause he was completely oblivious to what she was feeling. 

BETH BARANY: So she had feelings and she had yearnings then that, that were in addition to her programming. 

EZRA BARANY: Mm-hmm. 

BETH BARANY: So whoever created the robot must have put in the ability for her to evolve in that way. If she wasn't already programmed in that way.I don't know how you did that. 

EZRA BARANY: Yeah. 

BETH BARANY: How you decided that. 

EZRA BARANY: Yeah. 

BETH BARANY: What happens if you give a robot the ability to have feelings? I know some people have written stories like that and then what? There's a lot of unpredictability about that, just like in humans.

So what if the robot's feelings goes against their initial programming then what? Actually I read a fabulous series. You're told that the main character is a robot. But she is way more complex than that. It's like she doesn't really know who she is. Except she knows that she is not alive. Okay, here we go. 

EZRA BARANY: Astra 

BETH BARANY: Astra Idari. This is one of the books, Beyond the Reach. I think this is the latest book and the author is Darby Harn. And what's so wonderful about this series is the character starts off thinking that she is a robot and, but one of the biggest challenges that she's facing is that her memory is somehow full. So every night she gets downloaded into the ship, she's part of the ship, or she's in communication with the ship. And so she doesn't know what she's forgotten and she doesn't know how many times she's learned something and it causes all kinds of interesting problems for her.

And that's just one of the many intriguing things about this character 

EZRA BARANY: That's very cool 

BETH BARANY: Very, yeah. 

[07:03] Ethical Implications of AI Consciousness

EZRA BARANY: That kind of goes into how can you explore the ethical. implications of AI consciousness. 

BETH BARANY: Yeah, that's a huge conversation because we have to, we're making some assumptions about what are ethics and what are the morals of your story world and how does the culture view the robot? And so like in your story where the robot was so sad, it's as if maybe it was a culture where robots having feelings, and having any other desires beyond doing their job, were like maybe not acknowledged, so I think dealing with ethical and moral considerations, you have to establish what those are in your story world.

And then you need to give your robot reason to question that or be in conflict with that? Maybe if you, if that's something you wanna explore in your stories. Whatever implications are gonna be are gonna be dependent on the morals and ethics of your story world. So establish that first, and then decide how is your AI or robot going to conflict or enhance, or be on one side or the other of that dilemma, whatever the dilemma is.

EZRA BARANY: That's great. 

BETH BARANY: Yeah. 

[08:11] AI in the Janey McCallister Mystery Series

BETH BARANY: Let's talk real briefly about AI. I wanna talk about AI in a character, ' cause I have that in my Janey McCallister mystery series. I have four books out currently on Janey, and her solving mysteries, and she has an AI in her head. I've made the decision way back in 2016 when I first started developing this series, is that this AI would be like an assistant and wouldn't have any, wouldn't go against, its programming, her programming. But she has a personality. She helps Janey speed up her job but she doesn't always work as intended, and of course that can cause some problems.

So I haven't yet pulled in any ethical or moral dilemmas that would be interesting, maybe in a future story. So thanks for that idea. Uh. Awesome. 

[08:57] Conclusion and Contact Information

BETH BARANY: That's it today on AI and robot characters and fiction. If you have any other questions, let me know. You can contact me through how to write the future.com or tag me at Beth Barany on the socials or leave a comment on YouTube where you found this episode or on the blog post. 

[09:15] Mastermind Program for Writers

BETH BARANY: Today I wanna share if you are interested in working with Ezra and I, we have a group mastermind program for science fiction and fantasy writers. We meet twice a month. Ezra and I teach with them. We help people become better writers, we help you with craft, we help you with marketing. We help you with get ready for the beta readers, get ready to publish. We talk about: how do you design a cover? How do you write a marketing blurb? And what is a really good scene? 

EZRA BARANY: It's so awesome. 

BETH BARANY: It's so fun. It's an intimate group. We have room for one or two more people. If this is for you, check it out at coaching.BethBarany.com. Reach out if you'd like to chat with me and see if that's a good fit for you. We are only taking a few writers in this coming season, and you do have to have finished your first draft, so get writing. 

So that's it everyone, write long and prosper.