I was looking through some of @jeffclune's tweets about creative ways AIs have solved problems and was reminded of this book. Yukikaze is a fighter plane AI that gradually gains sentience and independence, but does so while remaining thoroughly alien. Whereas her human pilot is very attached to her, there's no indication that she is in any way attached to her human pilot, or even perceives him as anything other than one more variable in her missions.

Then there's @JanelleCShane's tweets. This one, I think, is particularly relevant to Yukikaze: "If 'kill all humans' is the easiest solution to a problem, then machine learning will do that unless prevented." (Tied in with this tweet, which is a little like a scene that actually happens in Yukikaze: "Another algorithm discovered that rather than minimizing force, it could apply such a huge force that it overflowed the simulator's memory and registered as zero instead. Of course, the pilot would die, but hey. Perfect score.")

I had been planning to give Good Luck, Yukikaze, the second book, another go starting today. It might be best to work on my interlibary loan books, though. I haven't decided yet.

I'm removing this from my Currently Reading list. I haven't touched it in months, and it's to the point where I'd need to at least skim what I've already read in order to not be lost. I'll try it again some other time, and start over from the beginning.

This is deadly boring so far. How can this be so boring when the first book was so good? I feel like Kambayashi and his characters have lost their focus. 

Well, crud. So far, this isn't as good as the first one, and I'm not entirely sure why. The battles seem harder to follow. Maybe because there's been so little of Rei + Yukikaze, the pilot/plane pair that works best together?

On the plus side, the AI stuff is way more prominent, and I enjoyed Major Booker's attempts to puzzle through Yukikaze's motivations for her actions at the end of the previous book. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that this book just has a rougher start than the first one.

I have one more workday to go, and I haven't quite finished my project yet (it's close - proofreading and figuring out what to put in the attachments), but I decided I deserved to start this a little early.