Kurt Vonnegut’s Ambivalent War on AI
Reviewing His Prescient Debut Novel ‘Player Piano’
When Paul Proteus, director of the Ilium Works, brings a stray cat into his state-of-the-art factory to hunt mice, the feline startles, flees, and is accidentally electrocuted—zap!—an early sign in Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano that the organic and innocent fare poorly in a mechanized world.
‘A Little Clicking Box’
Player Piano p…
