My daughter convinced me to read “Scythe” by Neal Shusterman. Aside from the morbid topic, it’s a well written book and an enjoyable story.
Basic concept: Humanity has advanced to the point where humans are now immortal. Any time someone dies (“deadish”) they are rushed to a revival center and brought back to life. When someone feels like they are too old they can “turn the corner” and be restored back to a younger physical age. People never lose their memories.
The world is run by AI so there is basically nothing for humans to do other than just live and do whatever they want to do. People do still have (pointless) jobs in this future world, which is approximately 200 years in the future.
Without death, of course population has no restraint. Shusterman rules out colonizing the solar system, so the population must be maintained at a level that Earth can support. Thus a few people are scythes, the only ones allowed to kill. This is a safeguard that humans chose when turning over control of the world to AI as humans didn’t trust AI with the ability to kill humans.
This is called gleaning as a friendlier word than kill or murder. Scythes must adhere to a simple code of ten commandments. Thus for instance they may not kill with any bias (just because you don’t like someone is not a justification for gleaning them).
Why just ten commandments? This is a great realization that law is easier to follow if it is a simple short, understandable list than some complex legal tomb that tries to anticipate every possibility.
If you ignore the well written story, there are deep implications to ponder. What is justified killing? Who should be allowed to make decisions on who lives or dies? Can humans, given power, avoid corruption?
If you are a scythe, do you just slaughter people to fill your quota? Or do you make decisions about whom should be killed? Can you truly remain unbiased in whom you kill? Do you start to consider some people as beneath you and unworthy of living?
If you can’t die, what motivates you? If you have all the time in the world, the entire perception of time is distorted. There is never a rush.
Is turning over running the world to AI a good idea? What constraints should be put on AI?
Who should be the grim reaper? Compassionate humans? Nature? Psychopaths?