With the development of generalized AI, what's the meaning of a person? – TechCrunch

For the next installment of the informal TechCrunch book club, we are reading the fourth story in Ted Chiang's Exhalation. The goal of this book club is to expand our minds to new worlds, ideas, and vistas, and The Lifecycle of Software Objects doesn't disappoint. Centered in a future world where virtual worlds and generalized AI have become commonplace, it's a fantastic example of speculative fiction that forces us to confront all kinds of fundamental questions. If you've missed the earlier parts in this book club series, be sure to check out: Some questions for the fifth story in the collection, Dacey's Patent Automatic Nanny, are included below. This is a much more sprawling story than the earlier short stories in Exhalation, with much more of a linear plot than the fractal koans we experienced before.