The Gentle Romance

I like it. Thanks for sharing.

(spoilers below)

While I recognize that in the story it's assumed alignment succeeds, I'm curious on a couple worldbuilding points.

First, about this stage of AI development:

His work becomes less stressful too — after AIs surpass his coding abilities, he spends most of his time talking to users, trying to understand what problems they’re trying to solve.

The AIs in the story are really good at understanding humans. How does he retain this job when it seems like AIs would do it better? Are AIs just prevented from taking over society from humans through a combination of alignment and some legal enforcement?

Second, by the end of the story, it seems like AIs are out of the picture entirely, except perhaps as human-like members of the hivemind. What happened to them?

In other words: I'd like to know what kind of alignment or legal framework you think could get us to this kind of utopia.

I assume this isn't crossposted because of a deal with Asmiov press, but on the offchance you could include at least the opening text here that'd be nice.

I found the piece pretty helpful for adjusting to what (maybe, optimistically) might be coming.

Thank you.

What was the writing process like for this piece?