AI American is a novel about power. It follows a woman and a man trying to live happily while going about their ordinary, daily lives at home and at work. It is a testament to the quiet, bloodless wars fought on the wood of the kitchen table and the flat expanse of the corporate desk. Layla and Tyman began their journey as software engineers in the still largely tribal, socialist world of post-colonial India. There, they learned their trade, forging the new, cold iron of the digital age.
A little before the turn of the twenty-first century, they crossed the dark water and made Pittsburgh their home. With their daughters, Tau and Cool, leading the way, they fast-tracked their American metamorphosis. The fierce journey from the old Indian dirt to the new American concrete yielded a massive, golden harvest, but it carried a heavy, unseen cost. The transformation did them much good, but it bruised the bone.
In the rush to weld themselves to the steel hills, Layla and Tyman let the old fires burn down to embers. They left the anchoring wisdom of their parents behind them in the dust. They lost their way. As the transplanted root drew up a strange and bitter water, they found themselves untethered in a cold valley of their own making. And when the old anchors dragged loose, they were left standing before the calm, perfect logic of the artificial minds they had labored to build. In a world pushed forward by the blind engine of progress, the novel asks the final thing: when the human animal loses the scent of its own trail, can an artificial intelligence point the way back to the water?
About the Authors
Sunitha Ravi and Ravi Joseph are veteran technologists whose careers span the global evolution of software and artificial intelligence. With leadership and engineering roots at Apple, Microsoft, BCG, and Highmark Health, they have spent decades working inside the roaring American tech engine. Growing up in Chennai and Bangalore before staking their claim in Pittsburgh in the mid-90s, they raised two daughters who now live in San Francisco. AI American is their debut novel, a story born from their deep expertise in artificial minds and their lived experience of the immigrant metamorphosis.
