The story of Olga, a retired mathematician, and Mateo, a college student passionate about robotics, and their attempt to influence Google. They meet to ponder ideas such as free will, merit, and the possibility of synthetic humans, and together they craft an extremely unorthodox job application, a direct appeal to a seemingly all-powerful corporation. Tension grows as their relationship becomes strained due to ideological differences, and while Olga confronts a terminal illness, Mateo plans an attack on Google.
Gopegui’s novel brilliantly steps into the middle of volatile and troubling debates about artificial intelligence, ethics and the meaning of personhood ... The writing, in Mark Schafer’s fine translation, remains cultured and probing.
With recent advances in Artificial Intelligence, Stay This Day and Night With Me nevertheless already feels slightly dated ... The fact that it's never clear whether or not Mateo and Olga are "real", or merely characters the writers of the application invent, or at least re-shape, to make their case is also a double-edged approach that seems to undermine their case against Google as much as it makes it ... It's an interesting idea, and quite well presented, but does fall short of its potential.
