Questions tagged [artificial-intelligence]

For questions about Artificial intelligence (AI) in science fiction. AI is the ability of constructed devices to think and/or feel for themselves. In science fiction, stories focus on the perils or helpfulness of artificial intelligence. (This tag is for questions about AI in science fiction works only. For general questions about developing AI, please visit https://ai.stackexchange.com instead.)

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7 votes
1 answer
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'80s novella about a computer running everything, which is destroyed by a punch card

I have been trying to find even a reference to this book and haven't been able to do so. I read it in the early '80s, but it might have been published a bit earlier. It was a rather small mass market ...
Random's user avatar
  • 73
18 votes
1 answer
1k views

Which story involved computers that used humans to avoid being frozen?

I've been trying to recall which story it was that involved machines or computers that kept humans around in order to avoid being frozen. Briefly, in the story, humans and machines were at war, and as ...
Huey's user avatar
  • 1,695
7 votes
1 answer
1k views

Story where colony ship is actually artificial intelligence lab which creates intelligence deciding how crew worship it

Ship is launched for stated purpose of colonization but one crew member is attempting to create artificial intelligence. As story develops although outfitted for colonization there are indications it ...
Quisizyx's user avatar
  • 683
10 votes
2 answers
1k views

Short story about sculptor who falls in love with a personal assistant AI her husband creates

This is a long short story or novella about a woman who sculpts statues out of metal that are also fountains. I think I read it in a “best of” anthology edited by Gardner Dozois about 10 years ago. ...
kapa lenkov's user avatar
28 votes
1 answer
2k views

Story with robot, distributed computation/AI and paperclip catching

I would likely have read this story in the late 1980s or early 90s. I do not recall if it was novel or short story length. My suspicion is that it was either part of Asimov's "robot" ...
AdamT's user avatar
  • 1,928
31 votes
2 answers
4k views

Story with a child-like AI being used to control a fusion reactor by being taught that the plasma was broccoli and that it hated it

The recent news about AI controlling fusion reminded me of a story I read in the 1990s or early 2000s. It was probably in Analog magazine. I think the story involved two scientists talking with a ...
user25866's user avatar
  • 1,272
5 votes
0 answers
113 views

Book about illiterate poet hobo travelling around a future "utopia" world controlled by an AI

Once more, I'm on a hunt for a sci-fi book which I read many many years ago. Aside from the plot, one thing I remember is that it had a painted cover similar to that favoured by Baen/Roc/etc. ...
Juice's user avatar
  • 607
9 votes
1 answer
952 views

Book(s) where an AI transforms humans into (bio)mechanical soldiers

I saw a review of aliens from a book series on YouTube about a week ago, and was wanting to check it out but don't remember the name. The books are about humans who, being humans, attacked an alien ...
Khaiser40's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
393 views

Sci-fi book series about an ex-soldier who's kidnapped from Earth by a spaceship-stealing robot, and goes on to create a mercenary band

A series of multiple books (recent; still writing more in the series). An ex-soldier living in their parents' cabin stumbles on a damaged spaceship in the woods, is kidnapped by the robot captain (who ...
Varikk's user avatar
  • 59
17 votes
1 answer
333 views

Identifying scifi story: a military pilots consciousness is uploaded after an accident, ends up piloting spaceships thousands of years later

Trying to find the details of a particular story I read it online in maybe the early 2000's or even late 90's. Not sure if it was ever physically published or just online. May have been published ...
Molomby's user avatar
  • 273
6 votes
1 answer
351 views

Humans captured by aliens, dissected and turned into AIs

Details I remember from the book for sure: Two of the characters were captured by an alien race. They were dissected by the aliens. One was turned into an AI to trick the humans of it being peaceful. ...
Adriot's user avatar
  • 69
10 votes
0 answers
143 views

Help identifying short sci-fi story — Artificially Intelligent "truck" that protects automated highways

I read this in the '80s in a school text book. It was either only a couple of pages long, or it was an excerpt. This version included an illustration (that may or may not have been part of the ...
Lobo Mella's user avatar
11 votes
1 answer
313 views

Looking for a short story about genius inventor and artificial creatures [duplicate]

A similar question has been answered, but with a different story. Short story where artificial life gets out of control I can provide some details from memory: It's probably from the golden age, ...
Gil Steiner's user avatar
19 votes
1 answer
3k views

Book or story where humans are genetically engineered to act as AI?

I don't remember the title or too many specifics, but here goes: Genetic engineering is ubiquitous. The system for explaining how genetic engineering works has a fixed number of "points" ...
blueberryfields's user avatar
16 votes
1 answer
1k views

Identify this show about an AI shipping company that won't stop

I recently saw a show (movie, episode, anthology episode) about a post apocalyptic AI that continued to produce and ship goods in large quantities even though people had no need for the products. The ...
Dennis Williamson's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
292 views

In "Star Trek: Discovery", what were the AI Control's motives?

In Star Trek: Discovery, the AI "Control" was the second season's antagonist. But what were its motives? I've just re-watched all three seasons and I can't see any explanation as to why ...
RoboJ1M's user avatar
  • 133
9 votes
1 answer
350 views

Short story about an AI space ship trying to escape another faster AI ship [duplicate]

It was all told from the perspective of the ship. It was traveling near the speed of light and was trying to escape another ship that was coming to reprogram it. It was much further ahead, but knew ...
AARON HALE's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
1k views

Book about AI that follows Bushido

I read this in the US in late 1980s, and I think it was written around then. It was set in the not-too-distant future. The main character was a woman, American I believe (or at least Western), ...
LAK's user avatar
  • 8,201
4 votes
1 answer
174 views

A Kindle unlimited SF series--soldier in experiment that puts him in stasis, catastrophe strikes, he awakes and tries to rebuild civilization

Having read many thousands of SF books over the years, I can't remember either the author or the title of this particular series. Underground experimental stasis test facility partially collapsed, ...
Screendoor's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
198 views

1970s short story: military artificial-intelligence starship with smart-aleck personality from alternate timeline visits Earth [duplicate]

This story was published in the mid-1970s, probably in F&SF, I remember it in a magazine, not in a book. It is told from the perspective of a U.S. military unmanned, artificial-intelligence ...
K-man's user avatar
  • 327
10 votes
1 answer
337 views

Self-aware telephone network [duplicate]

I heard about story from, say 50 years ago, about a telephone grid gaining self-awareness (and probably ending the world). Similar in nature to the original Frankenstein's monster: take a thing, add ...
Martin Brajer's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
307 views

SF book series. Main character is a lunar miner who finds an alien intelligence. First book stopping asteroid sent to destroy Earth

In the first book the main character is recruited (?) in a mission to save Earth by an alien AI with immense powers. He absconds with two robots, initially with no personalities, but radically ...
Patrick Marshall's user avatar
15 votes
1 answer
951 views

Science fiction story involving a psychologist having to locate and talk down a car AI that plans to explode its aftermarket bomb

I'd swear I found this one on the site, but I'm having difficulties locating it now. The basic conflict is that, somewhere in a large city, there's a car with an explosive device that's threatening to ...
FuzzyBoots's user avatar
  • 225k
4 votes
0 answers
80 views

SciFi short on YouTube about a spacecraft is travelling through space with only AI

A spacecraft is travelling through space with only AI. As the story moves forward it is revealed that all the scientists onboard the craft have died a long time ago, and now the AI is evolving to ...
Mark's user avatar
  • 41
2 votes
1 answer
589 views

1980s movie or TV series about a sentient computer that controls people by implanting microchips in the backs of their heads [duplicate]

I remember seeing this movie, it could even have been a TV series, in the early 1980s but the movie, or TV series, was clearly older probably '70s. It seemed to be European. I can't remember the ...
maraven2001's user avatar
10 votes
1 answer
189 views

Novel with main character able to mind-link to computers, a female telepath, a computer entity and a healing priest [duplicate]

I'm trying to identify a novel I read around 1990 give or take 5 years. It was fairly short (maybe 120 pages or so) and I read it in Dutch, but it is most likely a translation of an English original. ...
Tonny's user avatar
  • 3,354
11 votes
1 answer
2k views

Sci-fi short story where the military build a computer in a space ship that becomes sentient

Around 1980 I read a short story about the military's attempt to build an intelligent computer. The author put in several diagrams of how the computer would be made. In the story, the army keeps ...
Chas. Lekcirf's user avatar
10 votes
1 answer
874 views

Short story where humans perform fake tasks for AI

I'm trying to track down a short work of speculative fiction written in the past ~10 years that I downloaded in PDF form from somewhere ~2 years ago. In the not-too-distant future, AI automations have ...
Eric L.'s user avatar
  • 203
4 votes
1 answer
445 views

ID a story with someone (a woman I think) taken hostage by an AI

I'm trying to ID a 70s science fiction movie involving an AI that takes a woman (I think) hostage. It's not Demon Seed. IIRC it takes place in some slightly futuristic (in a 70s way) accommodation in ...
Dan Piponi's user avatar
3 votes
11 answers
1k views

What's the earliest treatment of a post-apocalypse, with historical social structures, and remnant AI tech?

I have two examples of something that might be a sub-genre, and I'm interested in finding more. The essential elements are: Several generations have passed since an apocalyptic event. Survivors are ...
andrewtinka's user avatar
25 votes
1 answer
1k views

Looking for a short story about a network problem being caused by an AI in the firmware [duplicate]

Hoping to get help and/or pique interest. I remember coming across the story online. A couple of system administrators are trying to track down an issue in a network, where a particular packet refuses ...
mklauber's user avatar
  • 353
13 votes
1 answer
1k views

Book about an AI that traps people on a spaceship

My memory about this story is rather short. I only remember the following points :- The story was in a collection of stories. In this, a robot/AI of some sort traps 2 people on a spaceship and sends ...
Infinity Milestone's user avatar
16 votes
2 answers
447 views

Science fiction book involving AI augmented humans, a vampire, a colonised planet, a massive living blob, blind human pilots, and more

There's a series of books I read, probably 10 years or more ago, that I just can’t seem to pinpoint. The timelines jump about a lot, so it’s hard to figure out the order, but here are some things I ...
Owen Spedding's user avatar
22 votes
1 answer
2k views

Short story about shutting down old AI at university

I’m trying to find a short story about shutting down an old AI at a university lab. The lab has lost their funding, there’s a guy that tends to the AI. They’re slightly anxious about turning it off - ...
ToddB's user avatar
  • 323
3 votes
1 answer
478 views

Is Voltron (Lion force) sentient?

I'm not 100% familiar with the 2010s series, but speaking more of the original 1980s cartoon/anime, and the early 2000s semi-spin off/continuation Voltron Force: It's been heavily implied that the ...
Russhiro's user avatar
  • 12.5k
10 votes
1 answer
163 views

What story has an aging actor cared for by a robotic facsimile of his daughter in her childhood, who is visited by his real adult daughter?

The section of plot I recall involves an older man, a former actor who is suffering from some form of cognitive decline, visited for the first time in years by his adult daughter. The man lives in a ...
noneuklid's user avatar
  • 170
8 votes
1 answer
293 views

Book about an AI neural network being trained to write a literary essay

I read this book for a college course about eight years ago. I think it was released before that, though. The main character is working with someone else who has accepted a bet that they can't produce ...
Nathan's user avatar
  • 1,288
2 votes
0 answers
72 views

Are most cars in Blaze and the Monster Machines purely autonomous?

In the series Blaze and the Monster Machines, the intelligent vehicles Blaze (and later Watts) have their own human drivers with which they seem to have a symbiotic Knight Rider-like relationship. We ...
Robert Columbia's user avatar
17 votes
6 answers
3k views

What is the earliest sci-fi story about humour and AI?

The "humourless robot" is a fairly standard trope in modern-day science fiction. Many writers take the view that the sense of humour is a uniquely human property, and so make a point of ...
Psychonaut's user avatar
  • 2,154
3 votes
1 answer
184 views

In "Girl Genius" novel "Agatha H. and the Clockwork Princess", do the Van Rijn Muses contain human consciousnesses?

In Girl Genius, there were nine super-intelligent robot "Muses" that were made by the spark van Rijn for the Storm King. They are robots, but they can hold a human consciousness, as they did ...
EngrStudent's user avatar
  • 2,432
9 votes
1 answer
779 views

Novel featuring an AI that backed itself up by encoding data as tattoos

As noted, there was an AI that backed itself up by encoding data in ornate tattoos that were offered free of charge to human clients. Also it seems to me that the protagonist's favourite expressions ...
Robb Smith's user avatar
7 votes
1 answer
1k views

Space anime with super large spaceship, lonely cube AI and young girl crowned as its queen

So, someone is looking for a specific space anime and I want to help him. His description of it: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/looking-for-a-specific-space-anime-pls-help.869977/ so i'm ...
ptlg225's user avatar
  • 1,239
15 votes
4 answers
2k views

What was the first sci-fi reference to one's life/being leaving the biological and becoming part of the machine/program?

In the 1992 film Lawnmower Man we see: Angelo confronts Jobe, who captures him and declares his plan to reach the final stage of evolution by becoming "pure energy" in the VSI computer ...
hawkeye's user avatar
  • 9,959
4 votes
1 answer
350 views

Which Sci-Fi work first showed the plot of falsely defaming AI?

In Star Trek: Picard (2020), Synths (AI robots) which led to their ban by the Federation. But, it later turned out that Romulans (a natural species) were behind this to falsely defame Synths so that ...
user931's user avatar
  • 116k
7 votes
1 answer
536 views

Story in which an AI takes over control to help humans [duplicate]

I'm looking for a short story I've found as a PDF on the Internet once, but I can't remember the name anymore and therefore can't find the story: It mostly follows a (bodily) young women, who turns ...
schleiffelder's user avatar
5 votes
0 answers
96 views

Short story about an artifical intelligence that is implied to actually become God [duplicate]

I heard this short story read to me many years back. I don't remember many details, but I was hoping I could maybe find it again. The details I do remember: There are people (I don't remember if they'...
Gorgantum's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
129 views

Why do androids hibernate in the Alien movies? [duplicate]

The android, Bishop, in the Aliens movie hibernates with the rest of the Sulaco crew for the 17 day voyage. Does he need to sleep? Unlike the Alien movie where Ash hibernated because was merely ...
RichS's user avatar
  • 38.6k
7 votes
1 answer
182 views

Short story about artificial intelligences that take years to develop [duplicate]

People can buy some small, baby AIs, that live inside a virtual world. Initially, the AIs cannot do much, have an intelligence similar to a puppy, but as the years pass, they gain more and more ...
rolisz's user avatar
  • 173
5 votes
1 answer
389 views

Book(s): Space Opera - Young Man becomes Captain, Homemade AI becomes Real Girl

I believe I read this either in the late 1990's or early 2000's. I may have stumbled across it as an online story (similar to how "John Dies at the End" was originally posted online), but I remember ...
GeekInOhio's user avatar
14 votes
1 answer
564 views

Can you identify this apocalyptic youtube film about a scrap metal robot?

Some time in the past 7 years, I saw a (possibly student) film on youtube about a scrap metal robot (The film itself may be older, but that is the timeframe in which I saw it). I will attempt to ...
CRYSTALMAN's user avatar