‘Culpability’: Family Story or AI Essay?

An ordinary family road trip takes a devastating turn. Questions arise about technology and moral responsibility.

Author Bruce Holsinger tells a story of AI and a conflicted family in "Culpability."

It’s fair to argue that America has an uneasy relationship with artificial intelligence. Even those at the top of the social, technological, and financial hierarchies don’t fully comprehend its effects for all of us. Fiction authors have tackled the issue before, going back to Samuel Butler’s “Erewhon” (1872). Now that it’s actually here, the subject is more timely than ever.

Bruce Holsinger’s novel “Culpability” is one of the latest novels to address it. The novel follows the Cassidy-Shaw family: Noah Cassidy, a mid-tier corporate lawyer; his brilliant wife Lorelei Shaw, a MacArthur Fellow and AI ethicist; and their three children Charlie, Alice, and Izzy. They are now dealing with the aftermath of a fatal car accident.

Autodrive Versus Human Error

The accident happens when their autonomous minivan, equipped with cutting-edge “SensTrek technology,” collides with another vehicle in rural Delaware. Charlie, 17, was in the driver’s seat when he suddenly took manual control moments before the impact. The other car’s occupants, a retired couple, were killed, but the five members of the Cassidy family escaped with relatively minor injuries. Everyone keeps calling them incredibly lucky.