The author brings the police missing persons investigation to life and I regularly found myself forgetting about my initial worries about AI. The police officers all have personal issues to deal with whilst looking for the missing young people and you can see how personal issues could cloud judgment. Crime fiction with a speculative twist, In the Blink of an Eye is an impressive debut from British author, Jo Callaghan. Everything you could hope for in a thriller: heartbreaking, intelligent, deftly plotted and so original’ FIONA CUMMINS Should a novel contain information that instructs us about parts of the world we haven’t yet or won’t ever encounter in the course of our own limited lives? The original ChatGPT – not to mention the newer models that have already caused that one to seem obsolete – has in its possession more information about the world than any human has ever possessed. Good fiction disturbs the comfortable. It does not continually buttress our existing views of ourselves and others. There may be no original thought in fiction, but it’s earthshaking stuff to follow along as a writer encounters the (to them) unknown. AI cannot do this; it maps only the known. The stakes are nonexistent.

I started reading this morning and ten hours later I’ve finished it! It’s so, SO good – really properly compelling, impossible to put down – I was desperate for the solution to the mystery – but so human and moving and massively thought-provoking on what makes us human’ LAURA MARSHALL For centuries men wrote our literature, our history, our travelogues, our philosophy. Virginia Woolf was not on the curriculum for my Oxford degree because she was not deemed to be of sufficient merit. Some might argue that AI provides the valuable service of customising fiction to each reader’s tastes and specifications. For example, you could tell AI to “serve” you fiction about an enemies-to-lovers arc that takes place in space. But how will you ever find something else to like if you stay entrenched within the loops fed to you by algorithms? And the oddly specific reading preferences – did algorithms have a hand in shaping those tastes in the first place? Reading has always been a bridge, a way of knowing that in the vast expanse of human existence, our joys and sorrows, fears and hopes are shared. But how does one reconcile this when the bridge is built by algorithms and code? While literature’s most extraordinary gift may be its ability to awaken empathy, it’s a curious endeavour to try to connect, to really feel, for something fundamentally unfeeling. Essentially In the Blink of an Eye is a police procedural, Kat and her squad conduct interviews, investigate clues and gather evidence to explain the fate of the missing men. Callaghan develops a solid mystery and I thought it played out well. There’s plenty of tension, enhanced by the anonymous perspective of a young man suffering at the hands of shadowy figures, and effective twists in the plot.A very well put together and entertaining police drama. I highly recommend it. You will feel all the emotions. I did some research and was amazed to discover that people were actively researching and piloting the use of AI in crime and became fascinated by all the debates about whether data-based algorithms could lead to fairer and more transparent policing. This opened up even more questions about how humans make decisions, and whether ‘gut instinct’ is just another word for prejudice, or, as Malcolm Gladwell argues in Blink, is the result of evidence-based decision-making processes too fast for most humans to comprehend. It fired off so many ideas in my brain, that I couldn’t wait to write a new take on the cop duo, by pairing an AI detective driven by algorithms with a human partner who makes decisions with their gut. But unfortunately, my husband was very ill, and so I didn’t start writing it until after he died in 2019. It then became a much more layered novel, as it allowed me to explore (and process) issues of love, loss and what it means to be human. Jo Callaghan is a strategist specialising in the future of work, and author of debut crime novel In the Blink of an Eye, published by Simon & Schuster. Further reading A standout debut with a unique and thrilling take on the detective novel. Engaging, exciting and superbly readable. I loved it' SARAH HILARY I was immediately drawn into In The Blink of an Eye, Jo Callaghan’s debut book. I was intrigued by the premise, drawn in by the writing and strong characterisation.

Instead of debating what AI will or will not be able to do in the future, we should be asking what we want from our criminal and justice system, and how AI could help us to achieve it. Our ambitions are unlikely to be delivered merely by replacing officers with computers – but think what might be achieved in a human-machine team, where each learns from and adds value to the other. What if we subjected human beings to the same scrutiny that we quite rightly place on AI, exposing our biases and assumptions to ongoing and constructive challenge? What if AI could assist with repetitive and resource-intensive tasks, giving police officers what Prof Eric Topol, writing about the AI revolution in medicine, has called the “gift of time”? This would allow them to treat both victims and the accused with the dignity that only humans can embody and that all members of society deserve. Also: if ChatGPT is not as clever as we think it is, then it could be done for plagiarism by thousands of irate authors or by itself. But I expect it has thought of that. Recently I wrote a novel under a pseudonym that was 95% AI-generated. I used three different systems to build Death of an Author. The experience showed me two things that I feel have been left out of most discussions of AI art. The first is that the traditional creative virtues – understanding style, knowing what a good sentence and paragraph look like – will be absolutely essential to AI creativity in the future. The second is that the fear of artificial intelligence, the fear that comes from the movies and from the inherently precarious nature of creative work, is blinding a lot of creators to grand possibilities. Jo Callaghan is a British fiction author. In The Blink of An Eye is her crime debut and first UK published book. It is published by Simon & Schuster on 19 January 2023 and you can also find it on our catalogue. Callaghan also uses the investigations to showcase the stark difference that can exist between humanity and intelligence. Between understanding human nature and a dogged pursuit of logic.I would love to work with AI on a piece of fiction. We could share the royalties, and the AI money could fund more women to get involved in AI research and application. The real problem is not that AI is writing, or will write, or can write. The problem is who is writing the AI programs and designing the algorithms. Who is setting the terms of the research? Who is deciding what matters? Mainly men. That’s a problem because the world is not made up of mainly men. The plot was so intriguing and the characters are very interesting, I do hope there is more to come with Kat.

With well-drawn characters, believable emotions and an interesting premise, you can see this becoming a TV series. 7/10’ Independent

The award for the most original and innovative plot thread this year goes to Jo Callaghan, for her debut novel, In The Blink of An Eye.

In The Blink of An Eye turns the standard police procedural on its head, and then some. As we all can imagine, the huge wealth of data that exists now in the world must make detectives' jobs increasingly difficult, with millions of resource hours needed to sift through and analyse for clues. In the Blink of an Eye is fresh, innovative and very very clever. Flawlessly paced, plotted and researched, it’s laugh out loud, heart-achingly sad and doesn’t have a dull moment. I raced through it. Simply sensational’ M. W. CRAVEN The revelation of the full villainy involved in the two men’s disappearance is intriguing, but it is Kat – her personality, her relationship with her young son and her experience of loss – that really lifts this novel’The characters already are well established and you know exactly who they are and what they’re about which I liked. I suspect some commissioners of fiction will seek the low-cost/low-risk model that AI-generated formulaic content may deliver. But is this necessarily a problem? There has always been a market for formulaic fiction across all genres and mediums, whether that be in crime, and romance novels, or action films. But each of these genres continues to be stretched and reinvented by new authors and screen writers, who crucially bring their own experiences to their work, with breakout hits such as Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, or Succession by Jesse Armstrong. If my children are anything to dogo by, I think we are becoming increasingly sophisticated consumers of creativity, alert to inauthenticity and intolerant of cliches, underpinned by a deep desire for human connection. For why else do we write and consume stories, if not to discover that someone else has felt what we now feel: to know that, ultimately, we are not alone?