70
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Which Sci-Fi work first showed hostile Artificial Intelligence?
1899: "Moxon's Master", a short story by Ambrose Bierce; first published in the San Francisco Examiner, April 16, 1899; reprinted in the collection Can Such Things Be?, which is available at ...
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65
votes
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Short story about a slower-than-light interstellar ship carrying the last seeds of humanity
This is "Long Shot", by Vernor Vinge.
A brief synopsis from Wikipedia:
Description of a voyage from Earth to Alpha Centauri by an automated, AI controlled colony ship. The ship is launched ...
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63
votes
Book about a time-travel war fought by computers
I'd suggest that this is likely to be a somewhat poorly-recalled "The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman.
This does feature "time travel" although this is related to the difference in relative speeds for ...
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47
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A SF novel where a very poor girl finds a "talking book" meant for daughters of extremely rich people
Sounds like the 1995 novel "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson.
The protagonist in the story is Nell, a thete (or person without a tribe; equivalent to the lowest working class) living in ...
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43
votes
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Story with robot, distributed computation/AI and paperclip catching
"The Turing Option" by Harry Harrison and Marvin Minsky seems a good possibility.
Mind meets microchip as a brilliant young genius develops a machine capable of spontaneous thought. Before ...
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41
votes
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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
This is "The Broccoli Factor" (1990) by Timothy Zahn.
The story is pretty much as described, the major difference is that JUNIOR (the AI) is at a two-year-old level, not 5.
"So what's ...
- 143k
38
votes
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What was the earliest story about an AI takeover before the book "Colossus"?
1909: E.M. Forster: "The Machine Stops".
The story is set in a world where humanity lives underground and relies on a giant machine to provide its needs. Most of the human population has ...
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37
votes
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Short story about shutting down old AI at university
This could be "Epoch", a novella by Cory Doctorow. It was originally published in 2009, and deals with an artificial intelligence called BIGMAC. The institute that hosts him wants to turn ...
34
votes
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Book about an AI that traps people on a spaceship
I think this the Asimov robot story "Escape!". The two people are Donovan and Powell, his recurring characters who are field testers for US Robots.
From Wikipedia:
Powell and Donovan board ...
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33
votes
AI tricks space pirates into attacking its ship; kills all but one as part of effort to "civilize" space
Guest Law by John C. Wright. I read it in Years Best SF 3.
The quote you remember is:
He spoke in a voice of Jovian calm: “Who else but a machine intelligence has so long a life that it can intend to ...
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31
votes
Which Sci-Fi work first showed hostile Artificial Intelligence?
1818: Frankenstein.
Despite Hollywood's changing of the story, in the novel, Victor Frankenstein creates the body from some ambiguous and previously undiscovered new life force. The brain and body ...
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31
votes
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Science fiction story where an author steals the settings from a better author's AI writing tool
This could be "So Bright The Vision" (1956), by Clifford Simak. The super-computers are called "yarners", and as the story starts the protagonist, Kemp Hart, looks at an expensive ...
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31
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Comic about an AI that equips its robot soldiers with spears and swords
To my understanding, it's the strip Rise of the Machines from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, by Zach Weinersmith. Reportedly, it was "Posted October 2, 2018 at 11:08 am".
Due to the ...
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30
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What is the earliest sci-fi story about humour and AI?
Good likelihood there's an earlier one, but The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966) by Robert A. Heinlein had a major character in the form of Mike — aka MYCROFT, the central computer of Luna City, which (...
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29
votes
Which Sci-Fi work first showed hostile Artificial Intelligence?
Talus, the Greek's man of brass, is probably the most famous example of an AI. He's an automaton made of Brass although his lineage is unclear. In Appolodorus Atheniensis, it says that "Medea ran him ...
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29
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Book or story where humans are genetically engineered to act as AI?
This matches many parts of Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer, first book of the Terra Ignota series. First book published in 2016.
One faction (the Gordians) has a method of psychological (not ...
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28
votes
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Looking for a short story about a network problem being caused by an AI in the firmware
This sounds like "Coding Machines" by Lawrence Kesteloot.
It starts with a trio of software developers investigating what appears to be a compiler bug. After a lengthy investigation (which ...
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28
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Trying to remember a short film about an assembly line AI becoming self-aware
This is the short film ANA by Factory Fifteen.
A rogue AI tricks a shiftless factory worker into giving it access to its own system, then proceeds to run amuck.
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28
votes
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Recent movie, woman is trapped in a medical pod (stasis pod?) and is trying everything to convince its AI to let her out
It's Oxygen (2021).
Despite several Google searches and looking at Google images for pictures from the movie, I found it doing a search on YouTube.
From IMDB.com:
Having no recollection of how she ...
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26
votes
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Looking for a scifi short story about two guys who suspect an AI is taking over the world
Thanks to Valorum challenging my recollection, I managed to find the story, Message Contains No Recognizable Symbols by Bill Hibbard (2007).
I was wrong on several accounts. It was 'Episcopalian ...
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26
votes
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Identify this show about an AI shipping company that won't stop
This is Autofac from the anthology TV show Electric Dreams.
Society and the world as we know it has collapsed. A massive, automatic factory operates according to the principles of consumerism; humans ...
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25
votes
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Short story about AI robot who kills all humans except a small group
Likely I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
A mad computer is torturing a small group of humans. One of them eventually takes it upon himself to kill the others with an icicle.
I ...
- 718k
25
votes
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Which story involved computers that used humans to avoid being frozen?
This is almost certainly The Beast Adjoins, by Ted Kosmatka. First published in Asimov's Science Fiction, July-August 2020. No synopsis yet on isfdb, but the full story is available directly from ...
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23
votes
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
This must surely be "The Broccoli Factor" by Timothy Zahn, first published in Analog in 1990, and later published in Star Song and Other Stories in 2002. The plot essentially goes exactly as ...
22
votes
Accepted
Nuclear breeder/reactor plant controlled by two A.I. makes too much power
Definitely N.U.K.E.E. by Don Widener (1974)1.
"The A.I.s were supposed to be based on 2 famous nuclear scientists. (pretty sure one was supposed to be Madam Curie. The other maybe Einstein or ...
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22
votes
Short Story about alien civilization that destroys other civilizations by giving them a machine that will answer virtually any question
This is "Perfect Answer" (1958) by L.J. Stecher Jr. (Joseph Wesley).
The Oracle tells the inhabitants how to spray the astronauts to protect themselves from imported diseases:
"The ...
- 143k
22
votes
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Short story about a self-aware machine that time travels; the title may have been an acronym
"Fulfillment", a novelette by A. E. van Vogt. You may have read it in one of these compilations, some of which can be borrowed (for free but registration required) from the Internet Archive.
...
- 171k
21
votes
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Short story about a self-driving car accident where the cars cannot harm the creator or his descendants
This is Override, by James Yu (full text available), published on Medium in November of 2015. You have most of the salient points correct: The cancer scientist, the grandson, the adjudicators, the ...
- 2,771
21
votes
Accepted
Story about an AI dreadnought trying to avenge the destruction of Earth
Is it possible you don't remember a cover because you read this story online?
This sounds like it could be The Last Angel.
A Web Original work by Proximal Flame first published on Spacebattles ...
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21
votes
Is "Miss Clarke and the Computer" (1973) the first published song written from an intelligent machine's point of view?
Earlier came OZ and its strange inhabitants:
From the musical “The Tik-Tok Man of Oz”, 1913.
Words by L. Frank Baum.
Music by Louis F. Gottschalk.
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License 3.0 ...
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Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible