My Child, the Algorithm: An Alternatively Intelligent Book of Love

Hannah Silva

ISBN 10: 1593767803 / ISBN 13: 9781593767808

Published by Soft Skull, 2024

About this Item

2024. paperback. . . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland.

Seller Inventory # V9781593767808

Bibliographic Details

• Title: My Child, the Algorithm: An Alternatively Intelligent Book of Love
• Publisher: Soft Skull
• Publication Date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1593767803
• ISBN 13: 9781593767808
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

A playful and provocative exploration of queer single parenting and love, in conversation with an AI algorithm and a toddler

My Child, the Algorithm describes encounters between a single parent, a curious, verbal toddler, and a language-producing algorithm. Like a male seahorse, Hannah Silva carried a baby made from her partner's egg. But when she gave birth, her partner left, and Hannah found herself navigating life alone with her child, surviving on United Kingdom universal credit, humor, and buckets of imagination.

As she navigates friendship, dating, and life as a queer parent in London, Hannah begins cowriting with an open-source language model, a precursor to ChatGPT, feeding the algorithm language and receiving language in return. Through her interactions with her toddler and the algorithm, expressions of humor, play, and insight begin to emerge. With the help and disruption of these unreliable narrators, Hannah deconstructs her story and constructs a new one, unraveling what she has been taught to want, finding alternative ways of thinking, loving, and parenting today.

About the Author

HANNAH SILVA is a writer and performer working in sound poetry, radio and experimental non-fiction. An Artificially Intelligent Guide to Love (BBC Radio 4) starred Fiona Shaw and was the starting point for My Child, the Algorithm. Silva has authored seven other plays for BBC Radio 3 and 4, winning the Tinniswood Award and numerous placements in the BBC Audio Drama Awards. Her debut poetry collection Forms of Protest was Highly Commended in the Forward Prizes. Talk in a bit, a record of sound poetry and music was in the Wire’s Top 25 albums of 2018. She lives in London with her child.