Artificial intelligence in fiction
[3][2] Similar ideas were also discussed by others around the same time as Butler, including George Eliot in a chapter of her final published work Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879).
[13][11] Iain Banks's Culture series of novels portrays a utopian, post-scarcity space society of humanoids, aliens, and advanced beings with artificial intelligence living in socialist habitats across the Milky Way.
[14][15] Researchers at the University of Cambridge have identified four major themes in utopian scenarios featuring AI: immortality, or indefinite lifespans; ease, or freedom from the need to work; gratification, or pleasure and entertainment provided by machines; and dominance, the power to protect oneself or rule over others.
[17] The researcher Duncan Lucas writes (in 2002) that humans are worried about the technology they are constructing, and that as machines started to approach intellect and thought, that concern becomes acute.
He calls the early 20th century dystopian view of AI in fiction the "animated automaton", naming as examples the 1931 film Frankenstein, the 1927 Metropolis, and the 1920 play R.U.R.
[18] A later 20th century approach he names "heuristic hardware", giving as instances 2001 a Space Odyssey, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and I, Robot.
[23] Among the many possible dystopian scenarios involving artificial intelligence, robots may usurp control over civilization from humans, forcing them into submission, hiding, or extinction.
Possibly the first novel to address this theme, The Wreck of the World (1889) by “William Grove” (pseudonym of Reginald Colebrooke Reade), takes place in 1948 and features sentient machines that revolt against the human race.
The science fiction novelist Frank Herbert explored the idea of a time when mankind might ban artificial intelligence (and in some interpretations, even all forms of computing technology including integrated circuits) entirely.
In films like the 2014 Ex Machina or 2015 Chappie, a single isolated genius becomes the first to successfully build an artificial general intelligence; scientists in the real world deem this to be unlikely.
[37] Analysing Ian McDonald's 2004 River of Gods, Krzysztof Solarewicz identifies the ways that it depicts AIs, including "independence and unexpectedness, political awkwardness, openness to the alien and the occidental value of authenticity.
[40] Mubin and colleagues believed that scientists and engineers avoided dystopian mentions of robots, possibly out of "a reluctance driven by trepidation or simply a lack of awareness".
[45] Such creators are portrayed as lone geniuses (eg, Tony Stark in the Iron Man Marvel Cinematic Universe films), associated with the military (eg, Colossus: The Forbin Project) and large corporations (eg, I, Robot), or making human-like AI to replace a lost loved one or serve as the ideal lover (e.g., The Stepford Wives).
