With eight years’ experience working as a writer on AI ethics at Microsoft and Google, Jenny Williams knows the technology’s possibilities – and its risks. The Nelson-based author brings that perspective to her new psychological thriller, House of Liars, exploring AI, creativity and human connection.
House of Liars puts six writers on a remote island – with one of them being an AI. Where did that premise come from?
The idea came to me when I was driving through a beautiful, remote area of Colorado called Paradox Valley – a perfect place for literary inspiration, no? I’d been wanting to write about AI and creativity and motherhood for a while but I hadn’t found the right scaffolding. With that hook, everything clicked.
What other books have you published?
My first novel, The Atlas of Forgotten Places, is a thriller about two women searching for missing loved ones in northern Uganda during a time of civil war. I also have a novelette about AI and motherhood, A Short Future History of Whales, which is also an audiobook on Spotify.
What are you reading at the moment?
I just finished The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey, which was masterful. Next I’m queuing up work by local authors George Penney, Chris Stuart, Kenneth Feller, Lyse Beck, and Joshua T. Calvert. My TBR pile grows faster than I can get through it – a very nice problem to have.
What conversations about AI were happening inside the industry years ago that the wider public is only beginning to have now?
On the ethics team, we recognized the potential for misinformation at scale very early on. I think the public initially dismissed generated content because AI would give people seven fingers or weird ears; even today, astute readers can tell when something’s been written by AI. But the models get more sophisticated every day, and in many cases we are already past the inflection point where we can tell what was made by AI versus a human.
What AI development concerns you most right now?
I worry less about specific AI capabilities and more about how quickly AI development is moving. Sometimes it feels like the minute we start to get a grasp on how AI is already impacting everyday people – the effects on cognition, education, relationships, culture – new models are released with a different set of implications. It’s so hard to be thoughtful and grounded in our collective approach when the landscape keeps shifting under our feet.
What did working in AI ethics actually look like day to day?
I was lucky to work with incredible people who brought enormous compassion and integrity to the work. Every day was different: some days we’d be deep in technical documentation to understand exactly how a particular AI model was trained and where its riskiest error scenarios might be; other days we’d be testing prototypes or writing up findings. All our research was turned into actionable guidance to help teams across Microsoft navigate similar ethical challenges.
Was there a particular moment when you realised AI was going to have a much bigger impact on society than most people appreciated?
There’s a scene in House of Liars where Anna describes her first encounter with GPT-3, a predecessor to ChatGPT. It leaves her utterly speechless – like witnessing science fiction come to life. Most of House of Liarsis fiction, but that scene was lifted pretty directly from my own experience.
When you think about the next decade of AI, what gives you hope?
I’m heartened by the number of people and organizations coming together to try to find a more measured path forward. I strongly believe that in addition to government regulation and raising public AI awareness, cultivating trust between real humans is going to be critical to amplifying potential AI opportunities while minimizing AI harms.
House of Liars by Jenny Williams, Marion Books, RRP $38.00. Available in all good bookshops and marionbooks.com
