A utilitarian AI charged with global sovereignty by a cabal of well-intentioned scientists and their monied supporters.
Its goal: in the face of cascading catastrophic climate change, nothing less than the preservation to the greatest degree possible of Life As We Know It — life on this planet as it has emerged in the last 10,000 years or so (stitch it into a throw pillow: Holocene, Sweet Holocene).
It has 20 years to clean up the mess and course correct: 20 years before relinquishing power to force the changes necessary to slow, halt, even reverse, AGW — an Aesymnetes or Roman dictator AI of sorts.
Does LAWKI take over like a benign — at least the humans hope… — Skynet or do members of some form of representative democracy yield their power for the greater good?
What can’t it do?
What couldn’t go wrong?
Title (and plot) TK, 632 pages, science fiction, trade paperback/ebook.