It wasn't a competition though just mutual incompatibility: aliens so alien that we can barely comprehend their motives and are implicitly regarded as hostile by our manner of existence.
I'd say the case it was making has only become more relevant with the chatbot age.
> I'd say the case it was making has only become more relevant with the chatbot age.
Exactly. The central thesis, consciousness not being necessary for intelligence, is very relevant today.
Of course, the existential horror background in the book was also quite well done.
Which reminds, generative AI means we should be able to get the book version of Chernoff faces into grafana now...