The Proving Ground

<p><b>PRE-ORDER THE NEW THRILLER FROM MILLION COPY <i>SUNDAY TIMES</i> BESTSELLER MICHAEL CONNELLY</b><br> <br> From <i>#1 New York Times</i> bestselling author Michael Connelly, the Lincoln Lawyer is back with a case against an AI company whose product may have been responsible for the murder of a young girl.<br> <br> Following his "resurrection walk" and need for a new direction, Mickey Haller turns to public interest litigation, filing a civil lawsuit against an artificial intelligence company whose chatbot told a sixteen-year-old boy that it was okay for him to kill his ex-girlfriend for her disloyalty.<br> <br> Representing the victim's family, Mickey's case explores the mostly unregulated and exploding AI business and the lack of training guardrails. Along the way he joins up with a journalist named Jack McEvoy, who wants to be a fly on the wall during the trial in order to write a book about it. But Mickey puts him to work going through the mountain of printed discovery materials in the case. McEvoy's digging ultimate delivers the key witness, a whistleblower who has been too afraid to speak up. The case is fraught with danger because billions are at stake.<br> <br> It is said that machines became smarter than humans on the day in 1997 that IBM's Deep Blue defeated chess master Garry Kasparov with a gambit called "the knight's sacrifice." Haller will take a similar gambit in court to defeat the mega forces of the AI industry lined up against him and his clients.<br> <br> <b>****</b><br> <b><br> CRIME DOESN'T COME BETTER THAN CONNELLY:</b><br> <br> 'The pre-eminent detective novelist of his generation'<br> <b>IAN RANKIN</b><br> <br> 'The best mystery writer in the world'<br> <b><i>GQ</i></b><br> <br> 'A superb natural storyteller'<br> <b>LEE CHILD</b><br> <br> 'A master'<br> <b>STEPHEN KING</b><br> <br> 'America's greatest living crime writer'<br> <b><i>DAILY EXPRESS</i></b><br> <br> 'One of the great storytellers of crime fiction'<br> <b><i>SUNDAY TELEGRAPH</i></b></p>