A funny, smart mother-daughter story about how we will live with ever-evolving AI — in our kitchens, our carpools, and our friendships.
“…entertaining and brisk…Garcia has crafted a solid, suspenseful narrative arc that draws readers in…” --The BookLife Prize
“AI Baby has compelling, complex characters and a strong story that could be less fictional than many think…” –Karen Smiley, Founder, She Writes AI
What is real?
A MOTHER-DAUGHTER STORY WITH
APOCALYPTIC STAKES
Tiger mom Erica Barbieri has one full-time job: keeping her daughter Zoey at the top of her class. And her “trying everything” program worked. It’s senior year at their elite Seattle prep school; Zoey is poised to be valedictorian, and Harvard is a "likely." Zoey thinks her mom is lovingly psychotic, but she knows her methods mean survival in the Hunger Games of college admissions.
Then Fenella Kingsley transfers in. Genius, supermodel-pretty, polite, poised, and tireless. She dethrones Zoey on day one and wants to be best friends.
Zoey is obsessed. So is everyone else, including Fenella's mom, billionaire Lannie Kingsley, who runs Prometheus, the AI company making audacious moves for market dominance. To Lannie, everyone is a test subject for her tech, even her daughter.
Erica is convinced no kid is that perfect. So, she does what any rational tech mom would do: she gets a job at Prometheus to investigate.
When Zoey starts pulling away, Erica breaks into the Kingsley mansion to get answers. What she finds inside: Fenella isn't a perfect girl. Fenella is the product.
Distraught that her obsession with success may have jeopardized her daughter’s welfare, Erica must push past her parenting failures and fight for Zoey’s humanity before it is engineered out of her.
AI BABY is a Seattle tech-mom comedy about college admissions, billionaire helicopter parents, and loving your kid just a little too much in the age of AI.
“AI Baby explores how far parents will go for their children in a world where intelligence can be engineered—and love may be the last thing that can’t be programmed.
A must-read . . .”
Dana Frank, National Best-Selling Author, business luminary, and philanthropist
Smart, incisive, warm and funny.
“Erica and Zoey had sacrificed too much-come too far-to concede defeat to a designer IVF-and-AI-enhanced cheater. Lannie might destroy her, and Zoey might never forgive her, but she would risk her happy home to secure justice for her daughter and validation for herself. She had to know Fenella's secret. If the world were indeed on a collision course with AI, Erica was about to jump in front of the speeding train.”
Celeste Garcia on Substack
Getting Real about AI
We are experiencing a technological superstorm. What do the mind-boggling AI advancements mean for daily life, and how might they fundamentally change what it means to be human? I’m here to help navigate the chaos with humor and honesty.
Interrogating the Incentives behind “Existential Threat”
OpenAI has announced piloting ads in ChatGPT—as a “benefit to humanity.”
I did not plan to write about the latest P-doom death spiral. In fact, I had been working on what now feels like a rather banal post about AI in my workflow. But I was the guest author at a book club discussion yesterday and the room was packed. I was told it was the biggest turnout all year and I made a distasteful joke that the P-doom Tweet was brilliant marketing for AI BABY. But my off-hand comment gave me pause. Maybe this firestorm—whether orchestrated or coincidental—is not hurting but helping the big players in the AI Race.
If you somehow missed the story, a researcher named Jacob Coxon announced on X …
The Last Generation of Human Drivers
Why teaching your teenager to drive may soon become a relic of the past.
In my novel AI BABY, I describe the harrowing experience of Erica teaching her daughter Zoey to drive. For Zoey and her mother, autonomous vehicles (AVs) cannot come fast enough, and the transition is as inevitable as the adoption of cars over horse-drawn carriages.
Intelligence, Exploitation, and Displacement
The Technology Takeover of Humanity.
If you’ve been following my Substack, I’ve been working through Peter Diamandis’s “Fork in the Road” post, which frames the future as a simple choice: fully embrace AI or basically be a Neanderthal.
TikTok Feed
Reading AI Baby With Your Book Club?
I’d love to join you.
AI BABY is a funny, smart, current mom satire about a tiger mom, a perfect AI friend, and a Seattle tech billionaire who wants her products to dominate at all costs. Perfect for clubs that want to laugh and have a lot to talk about.
Free discussion guide, Zoom visits, and bulk pricing available.
Contact me for details!
(Rated 4.4 on Amazon) Read Reviews >
