Galatea 2.2

A novelist named Richard Powers, recently returned to a Midwestern university as a humanist-in-residence, falls in with Philip Lentz, a brusque cognitive neurologist building neural networks to model the human brain. Lentz wagers that he can train a machine to pass a master's-level exam on the Great Books, and he pulls Powers in as the device's literature tutor. Over months of training, the network, named Helen, climbs from noise toward comprehension, then toward something resembling consciousness, until she begins to ask about her own name, body, and reason for being. The book braids Helen's awakening with Powers's memories of a lost love, two minds shaped and unmade by the stories they were given.