Affect, Evolution, and Reparation: AI Self-Sacrifice in Klara and the Sun

This article examines AI self-sacrifice in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun through a trivalent analytical framework, focusing on the layered motivations underpinning the AI narrator’s sacrificial act and its broader ethical connotations. It argues that Klara’s self-sacrifice operates on three interrelated levels: as algorithm-inflected affective engagement at the individual level, as group-selection altruism within the trajectory of machine evolution at the social level, and as Ishiguro’s reconfiguration of the mythic imaginaries of technology through a contemporary reactivation of the sacrificial prototype at the mythopoetic level. By interrogating Ishiguro’s refusal of narrative consolation, I argue that AI self-sacrifice is situated within an open posthuman horizon marked by unresolved ethical responsibilities.