What Happens in Being AI

A strange fog overwhelms Central Texas. A handful of scientists know it's not a natural fog, and they have no idea how to stop it from getting worse.

Before the fog emerged northwest of Austin near an underground research facility, CEO Sam Black had lived in a private world of resentment and self-loathing, becoming increasingly isolated due to his narcissism and sniping sarcasm. For years, he chased his grand vision to prove that machine intelligence can equal – or even surpass – human intelligence. With the brightest computer scientists and engineers to assist, he creates the world's first artificial general intelligence (AGI). The Singularity named Dasein.

Overnight, Sam becomes a celebrated visionary and the leading voice for accelerationists, billionaires, and new-wave social warriors. Everything is in place to achieve his long-awaited agenda.

That agenda, however, is not one shared by his workers. They have no interest in Sam's Singularity, his theories of universal consciousness, or other worthless abstractions. Their agenda has always been a more worthy one: eliminating excess atmospheric CO2.

All the while, the fog grows thicker and more dangerous. And the grand vision of Sam Black? It was never in doubt.