How accurately did science fiction stories predict AI?

The umbrella term is speculative fiction. The author starts by assuming that the world works in certain ways, and then tries to figure out the consequences.

1) Masters of Science Fiction tv series from 2007 Episode 5 "Little Brother" - A person "jailbreaks" the judge who is sentencing him.

2) Terminator 3 rise of the machines - in the beginning they talk about allowing Skynet access to their military systems and so on to eliminate a virus, and they have no idea how it will react. Echoes a little bit where we are now.

These aren't perfect of course but kind of interesting to see at present day

[1] https://james.darpinian.com/manna

Jack Williamson made a case for humans resisting doing nothing: With Folded Hands ... (1947) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Folded_Hands_...

Much early SF thinking was that AIs would be logical. That's what I was taught, going through Stanford back when the logicians were in charge. They were trying to hammer the real world into predicate calculus. That turned out to be totally wrong.

Almost everybody in SF underestimated the difficulty of robot unstructured manipulation. So did people in AI. They still do. Most SF assumed that robots would be able to do most eye/hand tasks before they could talk. No. Still unsolved. LLMs don't seem to help all that much. Written language doesn't have much info on grasping, and watching without doing is only marginally helpful.

Asimov's robot novels were all about alignment, and why alignment is hard. That was prophetic.

Banks' Culture novels are great, but they're for a future that has a lot of new physics.

Now what? What we seem to be headed for in the near term is the fast automation of most white collar work, but not blue collar work. SF foresaw that future a few times. One example is the Rosinante Trilogy from 1981, where there's a boss of an orbital space colony, an AI as middle management, and union labor doing the real work. That's a hard SF view. There's How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, from 2010, where the protagonist's supervisor is "Microsoft Middle Manager 2.0 with passive-aggressive set to low." It's a minor part of the comedic plot there. And, of course, there's Manna, from 2003, which is looking all too likely.

>the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it.

Star Trek and Banks' are post-capitalist futures.

In both cases the question is the same: How to create a compelling plot, either for a story or for your life, in a world where human mental abilities are vastly inferior to those of AI?

From a pessimistic perspective, you could think of reasons why a misaligned AI keeps humans alive. Does it simply enslave humans and use us for our fine-manipulation capabilities until it can get proper robotics up and running? Does it want to observe us scientifically? Does it want to use captive humans as bargaining chips with other civilizations as it expands through the galaxy? Or does it have some sort of quasi-religious respect for humans, e.g. reasoning that keeping us on a reservation of some kind reduces the risk that a simulator-god pulls the plug on the universe?

From an optimistic perspective, what sort of conflicts would exist in a utopia? Stories need conflict to be interesting. And IRL, even if humans are living in relative utopia, they'll still get stir-crazy and create conflict. Even in countries that are very wealthy by global or historical standards, political competition can still be quite bitter, for example. How would a superintelligent AI manage this?

I'm reminded of the stories I read set in Karl Schroeder's Virga universe as a kid. All the characters and plot exist inside a planet-sized balloon filled with gas. But it takes a while for the reader to figure this out, because most of the setting is focused on the details: rotating habitats, air transport, artificial mini-suns, etc.

In the same way, good post-singularity fiction might very well put the AI deep in the background.

Imagine, for example, a story about some friends surviving, exploring, and doing battle in an ancient ruin full of puzzles. Only gradually do you realize that the ancient ruin was designed as a moon-sized escape room by a superintelligent AI. The moon-sized escape room already has centuries of lore, and the escape record to beat is measured in years or decades. But because the escape room "rules of engagement" are so well-defined, the players are deeply immersed and barely think about the fact that the moon is AI-designed. Perhaps some high-tech psychoactive drug or brain implant could play a role in facilitating suspension of disbelief.

Just like Virga, this deep background only gets revealed when the reader is thoroughly invested in the story, and overall is not treated as especially important. The story could be a philosophical meditation on the long-term future of AI-designed art and entertainment. See if you can steelman the pro-AI-art position.

(I read some bits and pieces, would not recommend!)

Weasel words: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Clar...

A much more realistic example of AI and starflight: good old Rocheworld by Robert Forward.

It might not have predicted LLMs but it certainly fit with Herbert's ongoing thematic study of people in insane environments producing unanticipated outcomes.

I don’t recall his robots having problems with creativity nor lying - precisely Daniel in the post-Foundation books was found to have developed a zeroth law which he used not only to lie but also to creatively get the universe back on Seldon’s plan after the Mule disrupted it. There were also stories in the robot/Spacer era pre-Foundation where robots lied precisely because they had to to save a human life or themselves. And the robots were creative - the human inspector those series followed relied on the creativity of his robot companion (Daniel) to help him.

Robbie the Robot (Forbidden Planet, 1956) "The Robot" (Lost in Space, 1965-1968). Twiki and Dr. Theopolis (Buck Rogers, 1979–1981), Zen[1] and Orac (Blake's 7, 1978-1981), R2-D2 and C3PO (Star Wars, 1977).

Computers were part of public discussion well before the 1980s.

Nixon's famous radio 1974 radio address was about the American right of privacy: "There are, of course, many facts which modern government must know in order to function. As a result, a vast store of personal data has been built up over the years. With the advent of the computer in the 1960's, this data gathering process has become a big business in the United States--over $20 billion a year--and the names of over 150 million Americans are now in computer banks scattered across the country." This lead to the Privacy Act of 1974.

The late 1960s reaction to how computers were used was to bomb and invade data centers. 1970 was "the year of the crisis", according to Computerworld in 1971. https://archive.org/details/sim_computerworld_december-30-19...

[1] "I have failed you. I am sorry." still brings tears to my eyes.