Better Living Through Algorithms by Naomi Kritzer

Skynet is just around the corner. 

One of my reading goals in life is to work through all the short-story Hugo winners and nominees since the award's inception in 1955. When I saw that last year’s Hugo Award for Best Short Story (2024) went to Better Living Through Algorithms by Naomi Kritzer, I was curious to see what all the hoopla was about. Being unfamiliar with this author, I approached it with an open mind and ended up being pleasantly surprised.

Kritzer's story feels sharply relevant, capturing our present moment with uncanny precision. It focuses on the rapid encroachment of AI into our personal and professional lives, a theme that feels less like science fiction and more like our everyday reality. While the premise—our growing dependence on technology—has been explored in speculative fiction many many times before, Kritzer gives it a deeply unsettling edge. Many of us, myself included, struggle to tear ourselves away from the constant pull of our phones. Whether it’s scrolling endlessly, checking notifications, or letting algorithms dictate how we spend our time, it’s a habit that feels almost impossible to break. Kritzer’s story captures this all-too-familiar experience with remarkable accuracy, highlighting our crippling dependence on technology and the way it quietly dominates our attention.

At the heart of the story is the "Abelique" productivity app, an AI-driven App that's marketed as a life-changer, promising to streamline decision-making and enhance every aspect of its users' lives. The narrator is skeptical at first but eventually joins the thousands of others on the new App. What follows is a cautionary tale of how easily the allure of optimization and efficiency can override our humanity. The most striking aspect for me, was how  Kritzer portrayed the dehumanizing effects of advanced technology. As the narrator integrates Abelique into her life, the app's advice becomes indispensable—first for small, harmless decisions and later for profound, deeply personal ones such as finding meaning in her artwork. 

The app doesn’t just guide her—it reshapes her identity, quietly and insidiously. And that’s what makes it so terrifying and unsettlingly familiar in today’s tech-obsessed world. Kritzer doesn’t have to resort to dramatic dystopian tropes to make her point: this is all happening right now! She reveals how the slow, almost imperceptible erosion of autonomy becomes a part of everyday life. We willingly—sometimes even eagerly—hand over access to our most personal information, inviting these apps and tech companies like Google to influence not just what we do, but who we are at our core. It’s a chilling reflection of how easily we trade agency for convenience, often without even realizing what has been lost in the process.

We have all experienced that creeping sense of dependence on tech—whether it’s relying on GPS to navigate (guilty as charged), algorithms to suggest what to watch next, or apps to tell us how to feel. Kritzer distills that experience into a narrative that resonates deeply, exploring not just our dependence on technology but also how it erodes our ability to connect with others and even ourselves.

That said, the story isn’t without its quirks. There’s a hip, millennial vibe along with a kind of wry humor and self-awareness that might not sit well with everyone. Some readers might find the tone a bit grating or overly trendy. Overall, Better Living Through Algorithms delivers an interesting take on a familiar theme that’s becoming increasingly urgent. While it doesn’t entirely reinvent the wheel, its strength lies in how it captures the zeitgeist of our relationship with technology—and the subtle yet profound ways it reshapes what it means to be human. It certainly left me reflecting on my own tech habits and wondering how much control I’ve unknowingly ceded in the name of convenience or efficiency.