Journal Entry 11: Yamamoto: Intermission 4 - Story 4 (Sara Loughran)

I found this story to be interesting due to the concept of human eventually living in space and on other planets. The idea of someone being born in space seems kind of unfathomable, and to live in space, we would have to come up with technologies to fix the current problems that astronauts face from spending too long in space, such as loss of bone density, decreasing red blood cells, slowing of cardiovascular system functions, balance issues, eyesight deterioration, radiation, and many others. Of course this is speculative fiction, but NASA has already started to research on these things as humans attempt to travel further and further into space. I would say currently, we are at the equivalent of the era of early computers in terms of how much humans can do in space. We can do a lot when we are not the ones actually in space, just sending things into space and monitoring them, but the only thing we can relatively guarantee/do without much issue at this point is ensure that people won't die when going into space and coming back. We have barely explored so many of the realms of possibilities space has to offer, which is why this story is so interesting. There are plenty of works of fiction where humans have adapted to live in space and on other planets, but in this story, it seems that space and other planets have become preferable to Earth.

The AI in this story was similar to the previous one, because it explored the limitations of AI and the worries humans had about what would happen if they became sentient and rebelled against their creators. But I find it interesting that because the AI was the protagonist in this story, it was viewing the human as some kind of novel and interesting creature who it couldn't completely comprehend. I think in this story, instead of the AI gaining full emotional capacity because of a human engineering it that way like in the last story, it began to understand emotions on its own through its interactions with a human, and began to feel loneliness.