70
votes
Accepted
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 ...
- 159k
63
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 ...
- 5,923
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 ...
- 21.8k
48
votes
Which Asimov story has malevolent 3-law AI?
Genocide of non-humans
In Foundation's Edge it's implied that the robots using time travel shenanigans are the reason why humans never meet any aliens in the milky way, only empty planets ready to be ...
- 3,673
46
votes
Which Asimov story has malevolent 3-law AI?
I remember one novel by Isaac Asimov in which it was revealed, toward the end of the book, that one brilliant scientist had been working hard on a plan to use positronic brains to conquer the other ...
- 26.7k
43
votes
Accepted
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 ...
- 216k
41
votes
Accepted
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 ...
- 120k
38
votes
Accepted
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 ...
- 20.3k
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 ...
- 61.8k
34
votes
Accepted
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 ...
- 63.2k
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 ...
- 97.3k
31
votes
Accepted
Which Asimov story has malevolent 3-law AI?
It's important to note that Asimov's robot stories are all separate stories that he wrote for different reasons, that have different themes. Some stories, such as Runaround, emphasize the fallacy of ...
- 1,294
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 ...
- 568
31
votes
Accepted
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 ...
- 954
30
votes
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 (...
- 22.7k
30
votes
Accepted
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 ...
- 4,521
29
votes
Which Asimov story has malevolent 3-law AI?
. . . That Thou Art Mindful of Him
This story was the setting for trying to resolve the issues with the second law, that being "A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such ...
- 2,629
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 ...
- 1,392
28
votes
Which Asimov story has malevolent 3-law AI?
Perhaps not "significant harm to humanity", but the robot in Asimov's short story Liar! causes significant harm to a few humans even though it is trying its best to follow the Three Laws.
...
- 21.1k
28
votes
Accepted
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 ...
- 8,107
28
votes
Accepted
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.
- 676k
28
votes
Accepted
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 ...
- 11.3k
27
votes
Is there an in-universe explanation for terminators not knowing about human emotions?
Skynet likes to keep his Terminators d.u.m.b. dumb.
When they start learning, they start thinking and when they start thinking, they seem to have a habit of learning about emotions and siding with ...
- 676k
27
votes
Accepted
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 ...
- 5,923
26
votes
Accepted
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 ...
- 521
26
votes
Accepted
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 ...
- 676k
25
votes
Story about two men and a supercomputer with all answers
I am looking for a short story
"Ask a Foolish Question" by Robert Sheckley. You can read it at Project Gutenberg or listen to a reading at Librivox.
where 2 men (very old and young) looking ...
- 159k
25
votes
Accepted
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 ...
- 676k
25
votes
Accepted
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 ...
- 366
24
votes
Short sci-fi story I read in the 1980s: new satellite makes world's computers 'conscious'
This is, of course, the classic "Dial F for Frankenstein" by Arthur C. Clarke.
At 0150 Greenwich Mean Time on December 1, 1975, every telephone in
the world started to ring. A quarter of a ...
- 676k
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