Service Model (2024)
Adrian Tchaikovsky (1972)
373 pages
Expectations for humanity’s future in the presence of increasingly capable AI tend to fall into one of two camps: AI boomers who predict a nearly endless variety of beneficial technologies; and AI doomers, who paint an altogether bleaker, often apocalyptic picture. Technology ethicist Tristan Harris argues, however, that viewing these alternatives as relatively independent could blind us to a perhaps more likely possibility: In AI... there is an asymmetry. The upsides don't prevent the downsides; the downsides can undermine a world that can sustain the upsides. So, for example, [AI created] cancer drugs can't prevent a new [AI created] biological pathogen that's designed to wipe out humanity; but the biological pathogen that can wipe out humanity undermines a world in which cancer drugs are relevant at all. AI generating GDP growth of 10 to 15% because it's automating all science, all technology development, all military development, automating abundance, sounds great; but if the same AI that can do that also generates cyber weapons that can take down the entire financial system, which one of those things matter more – 15% GDP growth, or the thing that can undermine the basis of money and GDP at all?
(at 10’ 14” of Sam Harris’s Making Sense podcast, April 2026)
As it turns out, such a mixed scenario lies at the heart of the world that science fiction writer Adrian Tchaikovsky builds in his novel Service Model. A vast variety of highly capable robots efficiently and effectively perform much of the work once done by humans, and yet civilization has broadly collapsed into ruin, for reasons that only slowly become clear.
As the story opens, Charles, a valet robot at a manor house, one of the “great robot-heavy estates” (4) of the wealthy, has activated himself for the morning and begun working through the daily task list assigned him by his master. As he goes about his work, however, an unexpected discovery upends his routine, eventually leading him to not only lose his position as valet, but to also have to leave the manor and even give up his assigned name.
The robot goes in search of a new position – a new master to serve – but unexpectedly finds himself passing through a decaying and largely dysfunctional world, a reality that curated news feeds had hidden from humans and robots alike on the isolated estate. Bound by the hard constraints of his programming as a human-facing valet, yet forced to adapt to the variety of unexpected dangers the collapsing civilization around him presents, he pursues his goal doggedly – an anthropomorphization, admittedly, but one that captures well the questions Tchaikovsky explores in the story. As the robot ventures on, his search for work becomes ever more deeply connected to making sense of what has happened to society, and why.
Tchaikovsky manages to engage with readers on multiple levels with this novel. First and foremost, he has written an entertaining adventure story, one that puts on display his amazing ability to build plausible worlds, as he has repeatedly demonstrated in earlier stories. Woven into the apocalyptic drama, however, are laugh-out-loud moments, generally in the conclusions Charles draws and the statements he makes based on the inexorable logic of his programming – somehow all too reminiscent of what can be heard from the mouths of young teens who are absolutely, stubbornly convinced they know how things are and will argue their point tirelessly. Also mixed in are a variety of easter eggs, references to other novels and stories (beyond his own), some of which I think I recognized while others, I'll admit, I'm still working on.
On an entirely different level, the story provides a deadly serious view of where AI-based technologies could lead, given the socio-economic situation into which they are now being introduced, and without assuming something extreme like the Skynet-becomes-self-aware event in Terminator.
[The] Master was a man of considerable wealth and influence…. His influence was, towards the end, primarily engaged in the destruction of every part of his polity that benefited the polity as a whole or its population in general, on the basis that he was placed to reap a proportionally minor benefit from such destruction. Just as a single individual, his efforts had a measurable effect on the demise of society as a whole. Ironically, as he attempted to make his way to his bunker to enjoy the well-equipped retreat he had established for himself, his transport ran afoul of poorly maintained infrastructure and he was unable to reach his destination. (279)
At least, even if the end of civilization may be unavoidable, Tchaikovsky allows us a bit of schadenfreude as the walls come tumbling down.
I keep going back to the well with Tchaikovsky, picking up one of his novels after another (this one recommended by a friend) and he just never disappoints!
Other notes and information:
Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf
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