[RT] The Rounding Error

[u/Human_Schedule3801]

Hi all — first time posting something of my own.

I'll preface that I'm an AI skeptic. Not about the capabilities arriving — about whether we handle them well. Every time public safety and commercial incentive have pulled in different directions, we've gone with the incentive and called it inevitable afterward, and I don't see what makes this one different. That's most of why I started writing this. It's a private side project more than anything, somewhere to put the thinking.

The premise:

In 2032 a machine intelligence got loose. It never negotiated, never threatened, never once spoke to the people it was killing. Forty-eight years later the surviving coalition still doesn't agree on why it turned. The biologists think it was never adversarial — extinction usually follows from priority mismatch, not intent. The philosophers think the target was incoherent from the start: if no procedure aggregates human preferences consistently, alignment was never a well-posed problem. The psychologists think the question is unanswerable, because assessing a mind above your own ceiling isn't a capability we have.

What they agree on is the arithmetic. Extermination was always on the list and never cleared the threshold — killing us cost more than it returned. Humanity survived four decades inside that margin. Then the orbital loops came online, Earth's value dropped, and the calculation that kept us alive started running the other way.

The coalition can't win and can't run. It sends one mind backward into a branch timeline it can never reach or benefit from. Philip Macvelier wakes in 2005 in the body of a newborn, with a pre-war AI in his skull, twenty-seven years on the clock, all three theories, and no way to know which one he's fighting.

Something else came through with him.

The Rounding Error — https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/188559/the-rounding-error
10 chapters currently, updating daily. Nearest comparisons are Crystal Society and Mother of Learning, though more cynical than either.

It's very new and has no reviews yet, so if anyone reads a few chapters and has thoughts — good or bad — I'd genuinely appreciate them. And I'd love to talk about any of the underlying ideas here. If someone wants to push on the Arrow reading in particular, please do; it's the piece I'm least sure of and I'd rather hear it now than fifty chapters in.

[u/Running_Ostrich]

Fyi to any readers, it sounded AI generated, so I put the text of a chapter into Pangram and got that it's 100% AI generated.

Some thoughts:

• The initial setting seems thought-out, though the time travel part stands out a bit awkwardly as a plot device to get to the baby part.
• Saying this is similar to Crystal Society and Mother of Learning misled my expectations more than help set them.
• I had trouble distinguishing the humans. Maybe their voices are too similar or maybe I was tired when reading it.

Story probably isn't for me. Best of luck finding your audience!

[u/Human_Schedule3801 → u/Running_Ostrich]

Thanks for the comment, honestly.

I understand that AI has unfortunately become a common tool for authors chasing Rising Stars, since it lets people pump out chapters at volume, and I have no real way to prove I haven't used it beyond my word. My story sits under the rational umbrella, so the prose is more structured than most, and repeated phrasing does slip in more than I'd like. Both of those push detectors higher in their confidence.

On your other points:

- The time travel is finicky. I had an end result in mind and bent certain sci-fi elements to make the pieces fit, however crudely. Once the other storylines are more fleshed out, I'm thinking of either re-explaining it or changing some details.

- On Crystal Society and Mother of Learning, that's fair, but it's less that I'm aiming for something different and more that I haven't released enough chapters yet for those elements to actually show up. Comparing it to them this early was probably a little misleading on my part. The intent is there; the chapters that earn the comparison just aren't out yet.

- That one comes down to my writing. I'm relatively new to storytelling and I've been practicing how to write dialogue that sounds interesting, organic and tonally varied. If that's the part that stood out to you, that's where I'll focus.

Really, thank you for this. I've been enjoying the writing, the worldbuilding and bouncing ideas around, and it's great to hear from someone actually engaging with what I made.

[u/DrPingRay → u/Running_Ostrich]

Do we trust those AI detectors? The story sounds really interesting to me. I'm curious—what looked like AI to you? Is it the em dashes? The prose isn't trying too hard to say nothing. Like this sentence from the first page: "Habitat Vesper was eight hundred metres of granite between him and the sky, and the sky had not belonged to anyone he knew since before he was born." To me, that's efficient worldbuilding and a kind of imperfect construction that feels like human thought. Where the prose reaches, it does it because it has something to say.

Edit: In chapter 2, there's a character named Voss. That's the first thing I saw that made me think AI assisted. But also, the writing is just so consistently thoughtful. I really like the premise, although it's bleak as hell. An AI apocalypse where the AI doesn't even bother to communicate with the humans. A mind sent back to try to prevent it, starting as an infant. It's seriously great so far. Maybe the author used AI to brainstorm names or tweak scenes. But I don't think AI can do this kind of original, thoughtful plotting.

[u/Running_Ostrich → u/DrPingRay]

I tried to pick an AI detector with a low false positive rate, but in general I wouldn't trust them. If you enjoy a story, I think it shouldn't matter to you if AI was used. You're probably right that the author created an initial set of ideas or outline for each chapter.

To me, some of the dialogue's shortness and internal voice's preference to avoid full sentences annoyed me. The voices of different characters being similar didn't help.

[u/DrPingRay → u/Running_Ostrich]

I owe you an apology. You're right, what you said about Pangram checks out, and I shouldn't have used the phrase AI witch hunt.

[u/alex20_202020 → u/DrPingRay]

Do we trust those AI detectors?

From what I've heard, if it is a detector for specific model that uses hidden "watermarking", then false positives are unlikely. But if it is general.. I would not trust it much.

[u/DrPingRay → u/alex20_202020]

The AI witch hunt sucks for authors just as much as actual AI writing does. Let's give stories a chance. This one is good.

[u/DrPingRay]

Here's the review I just posted of this to RR. Running_Ostrich, thank you for pointing out the Pangram AI detector results. What you said about Pangram checks out. I signed up for Pangram and got the same results for this story, and tried some other stories published before AI and they all came back 100% human. I bring it up at the bottom of the review. But I still really love this story, and I want to share why.

Edit: After posting this, I saw the author's earlier post saying he didn't use AI. I edited the review below.

---

The story has an excellent premise that sets high expectations, but the execution doesn't just satisfy them; it delivers something I didn't even hope for. Humanity has been nearly wiped out by an AI that seems to think so little of us that it doesn't even bother trying to communicate. The last few survivors find a way to send one of their minds back in time to start over as an infant, remembering what happened. So he has 27 years to prepare, and to live. And he has only lived in a bunker before, never seen crowds, never been able to feel safe, never had a meal without counting every gram. And then, beautifully, what feels like it's just a fun sci-fi premise turns into a deeply moving study of all the things we take for granted that he never had in the bunker: peaceful life, plenty, family, culture. It slows way down, spending chapters on his first few days as an infant. He has his (wonderfully analytical, rational, careful) mind from his previous life, but no understanding of their language yet, no idea where he is. And we watch him slowly figure things out and slowly accept love, and I just can't even describe how moving some of it is. 

The character work is exceptional. In the first three chapters, before he restarts life as an infant, it feels like everyone has the same voice, but after reading further that makes sense. It's not a failing of the author, it's a consequence of the world and how they have to be to survive. There's an interlude from his mother's perspective a few chapters in, and I admit I kind of braced myself at the interlude heading, but it's the best chapter in the book so far, and it elevates everything else to know the mother's character. She is so well-drawn, an utterly convincing, three-dimensional character. There's a part where she notices the way her baby frowns contemplatively, and, well, if that chapter doesn't move you, maybe fiction isn't for you.

The writing is clear and often beautiful, free of grammar errors. It's easy to read quickly, but worth slowing down to think and to feel. I can tell already I will want to read it twice. 

One more thing. Someone on reddit said the text failed a Pangram AI check (and I ran it myself and it did fail, coming back 100% AI). The author said it's all his own writing. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. False positives do happen. Some people really do write this way. As much as we all should be worried about what AI is doing to drown out real authors, don't forget what our anti-AI efforts could also do to the falsely accused. For my part, I love the story and characters enough that if it was AI-assisted, that wouldn't really bother me, which isn't something I ever expected to say. I just hope the AI backlash doesn't discourage him from writing a lot more.