All she has to do is allow Superintelligence to observe the interplay of human emotions as Carol attempts a reunion with her former sweetheart, George (Bobby Cannavale), a likable college professor she apparently dropped years earlier because she didn’t think she was good enough for him.

will boost her bank account, pay off her student loans, fund a billion-dollar foundation for Carol’s do-gooding, and provide her with all the expensive trappings (posh penthouse, designer clothes, state-of the-art Tesla) that might have been hers had she remained a high-tech exec. assumes the voice (and, sporadically, the image) of James Corden, one of Carol’s fave-raves, to get past her initial resistance (and mortal terror) when it informs her that she’s been selected to serve as a human guinea pig.īasically, Superintelligence wants Carol to be a test subject in a controlled experiment that will allow it to learn more about humanity. Immodestly dubbing itself Superintelligence, the ubiquitous A.I. (She sleeps in a Notorious RBG T-shirt, so we’ll know right away about her politics.) When she reluctantly applies for work with a trendy startup that might benefit from her tech savviness, Carol is condescendingly dismissed as too drab and unexciting, and told that she’s “literally the most average person on earth.” But that may not be such a bad thing.Īctually, it’s spot-on perfect in the view of an artificial intelligence that has recently achieved “awareness,” and can manifest itself in anything from the rice cooker in Carol’s kitchen to the security system at Microsoft headquarters.

McCarthy plays Carol Peters, a sweet-natured but self-deprecating Seattle resident who walked away from her high-paying gig as a Yahoo exec to do good while working for environmental causes and facilitating pet adoptions.

Superintelligence book review