Galatea 2.2

By: Richard Powers

Narrated by: David Aaron Baker

Length: 14 hrs and 31 mins

Publisher's summary

After four novels and several years living abroad, the fictional protagonist of Galatea 2.2 - Richard Powers - returns to the United States as Humanist-in-Residence at the enormous Center for the Study of Advanced Sciences. There he runs afoul of Philip Lentz, an outspoken cognitive neurologist intent upon modeling the human brain by means of computer-based neural networks. Lentz involves Powers in an outlandish and irresistible project: to train a neural net on a canonical list of Great Books. Through repeated tutorials, the device grows gradually more worldly, until it demands to know its own name, sex, race, and reason for exisiting.

©1995 Richard Powers (P)2019 Recorded Books

Complex verbiage with a very self-centered focus

The narrator was really great, the idea of the story was really great, but it was just too difficult to listen through it. I am an artificial intelligence researcher and was intrigued by the description of the book, but the storytelling was too slow and it felt more like an autobiography of the main character with the number of very ordinary characters doing very ordinary things and talking in very ordinary ways. For a science fiction story it has a very traditional old-fashioned feeling which to me would be more appropriate in stories of yesteryear as opposed to an artificial intelligence.

The book is very well written and very well spoken. it just feels more like an author's attempt to be crafty with language than an exciting compelling story of an artificial intelligence.

if you are into fancy words and literary accomplishments then this book is probably going to be fantastic for you but if you are looking for a state-of-the-art story about an artificial intelligence with previously unachieved capabilities then I'm not so sure this book is for you. There is a chance it may get way better in those regards but I can't listen to it any longer and I'm sorry for that, it's a reflection of my own lack of patience and that's my shortcoming, not the shortcoming of the author.

Highly literary, big philosophical questions but grounded in relationships...

Brilliant craftsmanship, but no ‘easy’ reading. If you dig fast-pace, thriller-type stories, this one’s not for you.

Doesn't pass the Turing test

Richard Powers’ Galatea 2.2 is a 90’s story of artificial intelligence (AI). As such, it has become dated rather quickly. The tale is semi-autobiographical as the main character uses the author’s name and is a writer. He ends up in a year long project to ‘train’ a rudimentary AI in literature to test against a human at the level of graduate exams. Along the way, there are flashbacks to an eventual failed romance as well as a new romantic interest that never pans out. In the end, the AI determines that it cannot never enjoy experiences like a human and prefers to be deactivated.

Powers spends much time discussing the difficulty training an AI regarding language especially for which there is no physical component to experience. At the same, the variety of the English language to use the same word with distinct meaning crops up all the time. The failed romantic interludes were downright painful to watch. In the end, this is a tale of a socially awkward human who fixates on a digital persona to meet his needs.

The narration is reasonable with decent character distinction. Pacing is smooth and even.

Intellectual query

Captivating for Richard Powers lovers. Depth of his language thrills if you enjoy the well chosen word

Powers emerging power in evidence, but not fully

he is a wonderful writer. the characters, the development of H as cognition and learning system, the language and writer struggle ..all are memorable and well articulated.


his humanness is deep and attractive. but
the love interests are a novel (c) and s very short story (a) . these didn't work for me. too overwraught and seemingly unconnected to the work with H.