There was a story I read once where general AI was unobtainable but computing power continued so simulations of brains was done via processing brain slices. So every AI was just a person who had died with an intact brain that could be preserved. Self driving cars were a thing but it was someone’s grandma.
if you can recall the author/title i’d love to look at it! i’m curious how the story deals with the disjointed sensory input in the “revived” agent. e.g. does Grandma experience sight/sound/touch/feel? if not, how does she cope with sudden full-body paralysis/numbness/loss-of-familiar-senses? did she agree to this, or know it was going to happen? and so on. i remember one subplot to a Cory Doctorow book focused on a…
By the way, do you have the title of the book you mentioned?