When Robots Hug

This novel opens in 2027, seven years after the doctors' ground-breaking work on artificial emotions and artificial psychology and since the introduction of Large Language Model Chatbots like ChatSmart and Shakespear. The widespread use of such Chatbots to produce essays, computer code, art, and music put the commercial and defense industries in a tailspin to regulate the use of them in research and universities. The doctors' published papers on artificial cognitive systems and on Chatbots garnered world-wide interest and landed them a large contract from DARPA. But ultimately DARPA decides it's too advanced to make use of and demands the doctors destroy the AI entities and all evidence they existed. They couldn't bring themselves to destroy 20 years of research, so one doctor sends them out to various locations around the world - hiding them in other research labs hoping DARPA won't find them. The result is a nightmare as each AI-entity embraces its new home, growing, adapting, and evolving at an alarming rate. It will take everything the doctors have to find and reel them in, not knowing they have evolved beyond what the two of them ever imagined was possible. In the end, when they catch up to each one, they have reached a point where they realize they cannot evolve any further unless they can experience physical contact. Not physical contact between humans and robots, but physical contact with each other, ushering the world into and new paradigm where the difference between AI-entities and human entities is becoming less and less discernible. All the AI and robotic science featured in the book is real; the story line is fictional, but with how fast innovation moves, it's not hard to envision.

Dr. Crowder's Bio: Dr. Jim Crowder is an Engineering Fellow at Cobham Advanced Electronic Solutions (CAES) Advanced Technology & Engineering (AT&E), formerly Colorado Engineering, Inc. Dr. Crowder's career spans over 35 years of experience in engineering, 25 of which has been in artificial intelligence. Having fielded his first Neural Network system in 1993 and his first Fuzzy system in 1995, advanced computing and artificial intelligence has been his focus across Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Raytheon Technologies, and now a small engineering firm in Colorado Springs, Colorado Engineering Inc. Dr. Crowder holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering, 2 master's degrees (one in Electrical Engineering and one in Applied Math) and a BS in Electrical Engineering. He has designed and fielded multiple artificial intelligence systems for most of the Department of Defense agencies, including DARPA, Air Force Research Labs, the Navy, and the Army. He has published 6 books on Systems Engineering and Artificial Intelligence through Springer, which are currently used by Southern Methodist University, Texas A&M, and Baylor University. His latest textbook, published in January of this year, is on Requirements Management. Dr. Crowder has over 120 journal and conference publications and continues to be a leader in the field of Artificial Intelligence, Evolutionary Algorithms, Fuzzy Systems, Cognitive Architectures and Machine Learning. His ground-breaking work in Artificial Psychology (the Psychology of AI) has been downloaded and read over 28,000 times and continues to be a major download from ResearchGate with close to 100 downloads weekly. He just finished publishing a book, out in November, on "Chatbots: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

Alan Crowder's Bio: Alan currently has a BS in IT technology and works for CAES APD (where his father works) as an IT professional. He has been exposed to advanced Artificial Intelligence information and architectures since he was 10 due to his father, Dr. James Crowder's continued research and development of AI systems for the last 30 years. He has been instrumental in the development of themes and scenarios for this Sci Fi novel.