The Proving Ground
A Lincoln Lawyer Novel
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- USD 14.99
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- USD 14.99
Descripción editorial
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Connelly, the Lincoln Lawyer is back with a case against an AI company whose product may have been responsible for the murder of a young girl.
Following his “resurrection walk” and need for a new direction, Mickey Haller turns to public interest litigation, filing a civil lawsuit against an artificial intelligence company whose chatbot told a sixteen-year-old boy that it was okay for him to kill his ex-girlfriend for her disloyalty.
Representing the victim’s family, Mickey’s case explores the mostly unregulated and exploding AI business and the lack of training guardrails. Along the way he joins up with a journalist named Jack McEvoy, who wants to be a fly on the wall during the trial in order to write a book about it. But Mickey puts him to work going through the mountain of printed discovery materials in the case. McEvoy’s digging ultimate delivers the key witness, a whistleblower who has been too afraid to speak up. The case is fraught with danger because billions are at stake.
It is said that machines became smarter than humans on the day in 1997 that IBM’s Deep Blue defeated chess master Garry Kasparov with a gambit called “the knight’s sacrifice.” Haller will take a similar gambit in court to defeat the mega forces of the AI industry lined up against him and his clients.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestseller Connelly crafts a riveting eighth case for attorney Mickey Haller (after Resurrection Walk). Now focused on civil litigation after building his reputation in criminal defense, Haller takes on a high-stakes negligence suit against Tidalwaiv Technologies, a tech company whose AI chatbot companion for teens, Clair, allegedly encouraged high schooler Aaron Colton to murder his 16-year-old girlfriend Rebecca Randolph after she broke up with him. In the weeks before Rebecca's death, Aaron's growing connection with the misogynistic chatbot created a rift in the pair's relationship. As Haller investigates, he learns that Tidalwaiv launched Clair despite failing to train the generative AI model for a young, vulnerable audience, ignoring safeguards and ethical concerns from within the company. Meanwhile, Tidalwaiv's founder, Victor Wendt, promises stockholders the case will go away quietly, and grows determined to settle and avoid a possible merger-killing verdict, regardless of the cost. Connelly effectively dips his toe into topical waters here, touching on adolescent male loneliness and the dangers of AI without skimping on the propulsive plotting he's known for. Newcomers and series fans alike will find this fast-paced legal procedural intensely satisfying.
