Autonomous Decisions

Autonomous Decisions: Computing quandaries in short fiction

Who has, takes, or relinquishes control of computing software? The users, the corporations, the programmers, the State, or the algorithms and applications themselves? This short story collection explores the dynamics of who, or what, dominates—or perhaps ought to dominate—in our interactions with such technologies.

Car crash survivor Lubanzi in Claremont tries to get his new care robot to serve him more wine. An oncologist in a hospital in Athlone discovers that a donated radiation machine has a bug. Neev’s digital retinal implant becomes uncontrollable. An AI home assistant snitches on daughter dearest smoking marijuana in her bedroom. An honest, hard-working student from Khayelitsha tries not to succumb to the dubious social credit app at his university.

Delve into the moral quandaries and flagrant violations of fictionalised current cases and scenarios in information technology as well as past transgressions, explored in ten short stories situated in South Africa and elsewhere in the 21st century.

Published by KREST Publishers, 2025. ISBN: 978-0-7961-9536-4 (paperback) ; ISBN: 978-0-7961-9537-1 (eBook)

Buy from:

• KREST Publishers, in paperback or eBook format.
• Amazon: ebook on Kindle or paperback, or any of its country-specific sites, such as on amazon.co.uk and amazon.de.
• South African physical and online bookstores, including
  • Exclusive Books. It’s been spotted in the Cavendish bookshop in Claremont, Cape Town
  • Clarke’s bookshop in Cape Town CBD
  • DotDot Direct (online)
  • more TBA in 2025 as it’s the end of holiday season now and they’re stocking new books for 2025 (ask the bookstore).

More information is available from the academic page at http://www.meteck.org/AutonomousDecisions/.

Reviews and endorsements

On goodreads, among others:

Brilliantly written by a brilliant mind!

This is a book for the now generation. The AI debate, wonky algorithms, robot caretakers and a big dose of South African culture. A very enjoyable and educational read.

—Lynette

Awards

The story “Radiating confidence” (included in the collection) was shortlisted in the Northwestern Ontario Writer’s Workshop’s (NOWW) writing contest of 2024.

Supplementary material

FREE stories:

• Melokuhle — good things; published on East of the Web in January 2024. It’s also the first story in the short story collection. Wheelchair-bound Lubanzi tries to make his somewhat culturally-aware care robot serve him more wine.

A selection of recent(-ish) pages and materials related to the book (non-fiction):

• News item on this site about the talk at the EthicsLab at UCT.
• Blog post Background readings to the “Melokuhle — good things” short story; 7 January 2024.
• Blog post Social impact issues with LLMs – a brief write-up of my list from the SIGdial’23 panel; 17 September 2023.
• Lecture notes Social Issues and Professional Practice in IT and Computing (FKA Computer Ethics and since the CS BoK 2023 rebranded as Society, Ethics, and the Profession), developed for the Masters in Information Technology course on in (CSC5014Z) and for the SIPP module when it was part of CSC1016S at the University of Cape Town, which I taught from 2016-2021 and in 2023.