Polygon.com / 02.06.25

This cult science fiction book is the only novel that really got AI right

The current cultural fascination and frustration with artificial intelligence is nothing new. As far back as the 1921 Czech play R.U.R. the workers-rights story that first coined the term robot  science fiction writers have channeled fears about artificial intelligence into stories where robots represent (or just bring out) the absolute best or worst of humanity. But fictional portraits of AI have pretty much never looked like the actual present of AI. All those killer Terminators, rebellious Westworld robots, and nuke-hijacking supercomputers have nothing to do with what AI actually looks like now, with its endless ethical debates, destructive environmental impact, and hilarious failures. Still, the latest wave of stories about people treating generative chatbots like friends and therapists  and the warnings about what might happen as a result keep reminding me of the one sci-fi novel that really had prescient insight into the issues modern AI would face. John Varleys 1992 novel Ste...
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