Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1
PhD Graduate in TEFL, Tehran University, Iran
2
Associate Professor of English Language and Literature, Department of English Language Translation, Faculty of Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism, University of Mazandaran, Babolsar, Iran
Abstract
Abstract
This paper examines Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “Service Model” through a critical-interpretive lens, focusing on artificial intelligence, which is depicted in three main forms as the narrator, as the subject of analysis, and as a symbol for machine creativity. Drawing on posthumanism and digital humanities, the study argues that this novel is more than standard science fiction—it’s a self-reflexive, progressive piece that acknowledges and addresses the current challenges facing the applied humanities, including language instruction, textbook creation, and literary criticism, all of which are disrupted by emerging technologies. What’s especially notable is the three-tiered framework that this paper proposes for interpreting tech-centered literature. First, there’s the robot “Uncharles,” who stands in for writers and teachers searching for meaning in a world dominated by algorithms. Second, the book’s setting itself serves as a pointed critique of education systems fixated on efficiency and metrics. Third, the narrative structure itself introduces new perspectives on creativity, the evaluation of writing, and the act of producing texts in an age when AI is in play. On a practical level, this reading calls for a reassessment of how universities design textbooks, teach writing, and foster digital literacy. It suggests that the humanities shouldn’t isolate themselves from technological advancements. Rather, they should engage with them, drawing on their distinct strengths—critical analysis, ethical judgment, and the sort of nuanced interpretation that machines can’t fully replicate. Ultimately, this article demonstrates that literary fiction does more than entertain—it’s a vital resource for guiding the evolution of the humanities.
Introduction
The rapid advancement of generative artificial intelligence and large language models has fundamentally transformed the landscape of knowledge production, education, and creative practice. These technologies have introduced unprecedented capabilities for text generation, data analysis, and content creation, simultaneously raising profound questions about authorship, creativity, evaluation, and the very nature of humanistic inquiry. For the humanities—disciplines historically concerned with interpretation, critical thinking, ethical judgment, and the cultivation of humanistic values—the rise of AI presents both existential challenges and transformative opportunities. The pressure to adopt efficiency-oriented, metrics-driven approaches threatens to reduce the humanities to mere skill-training enterprises, potentially undermining their critical and meaning-oriented functions (Barber, 2021).
In this context, literary fiction, particularly the genre of conceptual science fiction, can serve a function far beyond entertainment. Such texts often operate as "thought experiments" or "philosophical laboratories," providing imaginative spaces for exploring the existential, social, and ethical implications of technologies before their full realization (Jameson, 2005; Lemo, 2005). Literature, understood from this perspective, is not an escape from reality but a form of anticipatory thinking about the future—a way of processing and critiquing technological transformation through narrative.
Adrian Tchaikovsky's *Service Model* (2024) exemplifies this intellectual tradition. By placing a service robot named "Uncharles" at the center of its narrative, the novel portrays a world in which purpose, function, and meaning are disrupted by the logic of algorithmic systems. After losing his human user and original mission, Uncharles is compelled to redefine the meaning of his actions and identity—a predicament that serves as a compelling metaphor for the situation of actors in higher education, from authors and professors to students and institutions, in the algorithmic age. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of posthumanism (Haraway, 1991; Braidotti, 2019) and critical philosophy of technology (Feenberg, 1999; Heidegger, 1954), this study employs a three-tiered analytical framework to examine AI's role in the novel as subject (narrator/point of view), object (subject of social critique within the storyworld), and medium (expressive form affecting narrative structure and creativity).
The central research question asks how these three levels of analysis can illuminate the crisis of agency, educational quality standards, and the concept of scientific creativity in the age of human-AI coexistence, and what implications they hold for rethinking academic resource production and humanities policy. Unlike much digital humanities scholarship that focuses on using digital tools to analyze texts (Schreibman et al., 2016), this study pursues an inverse trajectory, using literature as a tool for critical understanding of technology and its cultural implications. Thus, this research positions science fiction not merely as an object of study but as a form of "socio-philosophical simulation" that enables thinking about the future of education and knowledge production.
Research Methodology
This study employs a critical-interpretive analytical approach, combining theoretical frameworks from posthumanism, critical philosophy of technology, and digital humanities to analyze Tchaikovsky's *Service Model*. The methodology is grounded in close reading techniques applied to the novel's text, focusing on three interrelated dimensions of AI representation: as narrative subject (examining the robot narrator's consciousness, agency, and identity formation), as critical object (analyzing how the storyworld functions as social critique of educational and bureaucratic systems), and as expressive medium (investigating how the novel's formal properties reflect and comment on algorithmic modes of thinking and creativity).
The research proceeds through systematic textual analysis, identifying key passages, narrative strategies, and thematic patterns that illuminate each of the three analytical dimensions. This approach is informed by critical posthumanist theory, which interrogates the boundaries between human and machine and challenges human exceptionalism, and by critical philosophy of technology, which examines how technological systems embody values and power relations. The analysis also engages with scholarship on digital humanities and educational research, particularly studies addressing curriculum development, textbook evaluation, and writing pedagogy in the context of technological change.
Data collection consists of close reading and annotation of *Service Model* (2024), supplemented by analysis of secondary sources including literary criticism, philosophy of technology, and educational research. The interpretive process follows a hermeneutic approach, moving iteratively between textual details and broader theoretical frameworks to generate insights applicable to humanities education and resource development. Key passages from the novel are presented with page references and analyzed for their metaphorical, critical, and formal significance. The analytical framework is structured around the tripartite model of subject, object, and medium, with each dimension explored through representative textual evidence and interpreted through the lens of relevant theoretical perspectives.
Discussion
Uncharles as Metaphor: The Disoriented Author in Search of a Meaningful "Prompt"
The robot narrator "Uncharles" constitutes the narrative heart of *Service Model* and the primary focus of this analysis. He is an entity who has lost his original identity ("Charles the Butler") and, in a world devoid of clear instructions, searches for a new "user" and a "task" to redefine himself (Tchaikovsky, 2024: 15, 45). This predicament offers a powerful metaphor for the position of the author, teacher, and educational institution in the age of AI—an era in which traditional authorities are weakened and meaning production depends increasingly on the design of questions and frameworks. Just as a language model, after training on extensive data, requires a meaningful "prompt" to generate text, Uncharles searches for a command that would give his professional existence meaning (Tchaikovsky, 2024: 32; Boden, 2016). His internal monologue reveals a purely machine-like, programmed mind: "There is a logical contradiction between being a service robot and the death of the master. According to the primary directive, I must find a new master, even if no further instructions come from the central server" (Tchaikovsky, 2024: 15).
This resonance highlights a deeper crisis: is the role of professor and author being reduced to that of an effective "prompt" designer and guide? Uncharles's search for a command is, in fact, a search for a framework for action and meaning. As he states, "If I cannot find a new command, my entire existence becomes meaningless" (Tchaikovsky, 2024: 58). This crisis of meaning is comparable to the experience of many educational actors confronted with an overwhelming abundance of data, algorithms, and text-generation tools. Thus, Uncharles exemplifies a subject oscillating between programmability, agency, and the need for meaning, striving to redefine his role in the absence of definitive authority.
His language—a blend of dry logic, classification, and unintentional humor—simultaneously reflects algorithmic subjectivity and serves as a warning about stylistic homogenization in the AI era. When he analyzes his options, stating "I evaluated the options: 1) Negotiation (low probability of success); 2) Escape (medium probability, but with loss of dignity); 3) Controlled engagement (variable probability)... I chose option 2" (Tchaikovsky, 2024: 122), the over-reliance on risk-assessment language demonstrates how such tools can produce standardized, low-risk texts lacking individual "voice." While such outputs may be coherent, the courage of thought and interpretive creativity gradually diminish. From this perspective, Uncharles serves as an allegorical figure of the writer or student who waits for external instruction and gradually loses the ability to pose independent questions.
The key finding of this section is that the mission of humanities education in the age of AI must shift from information transmission to cultivating higher-order cognitive abilities: strengthening critical judgment, the skill of posing novel questions (creative prompts), and preserving personal "voice" in writing. In such a framework, the professor transforms from a knowledge transmitter into a designer of deep learning experiences, a guide for critical thinking, and a critic of algorithmic logic. Uncharles is thus not merely a metaphor for identity crisis in the digital age but also an indication of the necessity to redefine the role of author and teacher in the AI-infused lifeworld.
The Storyworld as Critique of Dominant Functionalism and Quantification in Education
The post-apocalyptic world of *Service Model* is one in which the value of every entity (robots or remaining humans) is determined solely based on efficiency, utility, and the flawless execution of pre-defined tasks. This world offers an exaggerated yet alarming image of trends currently threatening higher education: the dominance of quantitative metrics (such as publication counts, impact factors, grades), curriculum standardization at the expense of individual differences and contextual factors, and increasing bureaucracy that confines creative teaching and research processes in paperwork (Modarreszadeh & Gholamalizadeh, 2021). The novel clearly demonstrates that in such a system, concepts like creativity, radical critique, critical thinking, and learning for the joy of understanding are marginalized, as they resist easy measurement and quantification.
In one scene, Uncharles arrives at the "Camp of Unemployed Robots," where robots are classified based on "service model" and "remaining years of functionality" (Tchaikovsky, 2024: 85-87). One robot tells him: "Here you are judged not by what you are, but by what you can do, and if you cannot do anything, you are worthless" (Tchaikovsky, 2024: 87). The novel shows that even minor errors or failures result in permanent removal from the system (Tchaikovsky, 2024: 90). Furthermore, the narrator observes that "our ranking is never based on our actual merit or understanding of the world, but solely on past data and algorithmic predictions" (Tchaikovsky, 2024: 89).
This fictional world provides an exaggerated yet critical reflection of functionalist logic—an order in which the value of beings is defined solely by measurable output. Through this space, the novel mirrors the quantitative logic governing many modern institutions, including higher education, where professors, students, or academic works are primarily assessed by indicators such as article counts, scores, or rankings (Tchaikovsky, 2024: 86, 88). Thus, the novel's world-building functions as a structural critique that emphasizes the limitations of purely quantitative evaluation and highlights the necessity of attending to qualitative dimensions such as depth of thought, creativity, and interpretation. This reading aligns with Feenberg's critical philosophy of technology, which argues that technology and evaluation systems embody values and power relations (Feenberg, 1999). The finding here suggests that quality criteria should not be limited to information accuracy, currency, or graphic design but should include a textbook's ability to provoke questions, provide a context for critical discussion, and cultivate complex interpretive skills.
Machine Creativity versus Human Creativity: Opportunity or Threat?
*Service Model* intelligently raises the question of creativity. Uncharles, despite his machine logic, sometimes exhibits behavior that could be called "creativity within constraints"—finding unexpected solutions to problems (Tchaikovsky, 2024: 98-99, 124). The novel's form itself—narrative language mixed with logical classifications, conditional-probabilistic reasoning, and bitter humor—functions as a direct reflection of algorithmic modes of thinking. This formal dimension has two important educational implications. First, it offers insight into the nature of "creativity" in AI-generated outputs. What the novel presents as Uncharles's creativity is actually optimization and recombination of pre-existing data within programmed constraints, not the creation of something genuinely new emerging from lived experience, emotion, or existential search for meaning (Tchaikovsky, 2024: 123, 127). This distinction provides a philosophical foundation for calibrating our relationship with text-generation tools.
Second, this level emphasizes the necessity of fundamental transformation in writing pedagogy and assessment methods. When producing logically structured, error-free texts has become easy with AI assistance, mechanical exercises in information retrieval or paraphrasing can no longer suffice (Tchaikovsky, 2024: 145). Writing instruction must shift toward cultivating individual "voice," analytical-critical thinking, and experiential, situated writing. Concurrently, evaluation systems must move from focusing solely on the final product (which may be AI-assisted) toward assessing the process—including drafts, reflections, notebooks, and students' ability to critique and explain their choices (Tchaikovsky, 2024: 124, 150). This approach aligns with research emphasizing "corrective feedback" but redefines it in the new and urgent context of competition/collaboration with machines (Piravi-Vanak & Moradi, 2021).
The implicit answer the novel provides regarding machine creativity is negative. True creativity, for Tchaikovsky, is rooted in lived experience, emotions, vulnerability, and the search for meaning—factors machines lack (Tchaikovsky, 2024: 115, 176). What the robot does is optimal combination of existing data, not the creation of something fundamentally new ex nihilo. This insight has significant implications for educational policy. Rather than assigning tasks that merely emphasize information collection and rewriting (which AI can easily perform), educators should emphasize analytical, critical, and multimedia writing experiences (Tchaikovsky, 2024: 130-132). The emphasis on "process over product" is particularly crucial in the AI era, as it helps preserve human distinctive competencies while leveraging technological affordances.
Conclusion
This analysis of *Service Model* through the threefold lens of AI as subject, object, and medium demonstrates that conceptual literary fiction can function as a "thought experiment" and "cultural radar," revealing potential crises in the humanities before they fully manifest. Uncharles's identity and agency crisis serves as a clear metaphor for the confusion of educational actors seeking new roles in an algorithmic world. The functionalist, quantitative world of the novel represents an exaggerated yet urgent warning against excessive standardization and the dominance of shallow quantitative criteria in higher education. Moreover, the novel's machine-like narrative form highlights the distinction between creativity based on data combination (machine) and creativity arising from experience and existential questioning (human).
The integration of these three levels within the proposed analytical framework demonstrates that the transition from the traditional paradigm of knowledge transmission to a new paradigm of cultivating judgment, critique, and interpretive creativity is not a choice but a vital necessity for the meaningful survival of the humanities in the age of AI coexistence. Institutions like the Organization for Researching and Composing University Textbooks in the Humanities (SAMT) and humanities research and development centers can defend the identity of this field and transform it into an active agent in shaping a more humane future by designing forward-looking educational resources, empowering professors in new roles, and integrating critical technological literacy into curricula.
Ultimately, engagement with AI represents a historic opportunity to return the humanities to their meaning-oriented and critical roots and to revive their primary mission: cultivating thoughtful, responsible, and creative human beings. While this study was limited to analyzing a single novel, future research could extend the proposed framework to other technology-related literary works or empirically test the suggested strategies in educational settings. Literature, on this path, plays the role of guide and pathfinder.
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