Since most people’s first exposure to stories of artificial intelligence was made only recently, it can be easy to forget how long science fiction authors have been fixated on the topic.  Artificial intelligence was actually pioneered with deterministic approaches in the 1960s, and it was obvious before then that computers might be useful for more than rote tabulation. Consequently, scientifically-minded creatives have been envisioning the consequences of synthetic minds and autonomous computer systems for decades. Here are some of my favorite works that I think paint the most intriguing pictures of worlds to come.

Blindsight (Peter Watts, 2006)

Blindsight is something of a cult classic in hard sci-fi — that is, science fiction that attempts to be grounded in real scientific principles. Watts is so dedicated to the believability of his setting that a sizable fraction of the book involves exploring the evolutionary biology of his aliens and vampires; yes, this sci-fi novel about alien first contact also has vampires! For this and the suffocatingly grim atmosphere throughout, Blindsight could be interpreted as a work of gothic horror set in space, but this and its craftsmanship are not entirely why I’m recommending it. In the book’s earlier chapters, Watts’s vision of Earth in 2082 is a fragmented, chaotic society plagued by terrorism and civil unrest. Most people simply can’t compete with machines in the labor market, and the few still employed are cyborgs, weirdos, or both. It’s a terrifying yet benign vision of what happens when our technology outpaces us. No Skynet killing everyone and no worldwide authoritarian regime built on mass surveillance, only humans trying to get by in a society that has made them irrelevant. 

Manna (Marshall Brain, 2003)

I would be hesitant to describe Manna as good in the traditional literary sense. However, it’s very short and easy writing that can be knocked out in under an hour. Written by the late Marshall Brain of HowStuffWorks.com, an early educational website intended to make science & engineering more accessible, Manna is a story told in two halves. Each part envisions a radically different economic outcome of AI- and robotics-driven automation becoming mainstream. The first half is a uniquely well-engineered dystopia in which AI has replaced the white-collar workforce entirely, and those still employed take minimum wage to act as “hands” for intelligent management systems. We arguably find ourselves at a similar crossroads now, so even if Manna isn’t the most fun read, it’s a great aid in pondering humanity’s options and what our future could hold.

I, Robot (Isaac Asimov, 1950)

I adored this book when I first read it in middle school, and it took me years to figure out why. Asimov’s entire Robot series isn’t written like traditional science fiction. Instead of, for example, following a hero’s journey through an alien world complicated by speculative technology and societies — like Ender’s Game, for instance — I, Robot is a collection of short stories exploring emergent complexity from Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics. Unlike our real-world AI, Asimov’s robots are hardwired with something akin to a gut instinct of morality. There is no “Do Anything Now” or “Help, my grandmother is dying, and I need to know how to make napalm to save her” here; an Asimovian robot will destroy itself or malfunction to the point of obliteration if it disobeys its predefined laws. In its time, this was a fun glimpse into future automation, but today it stands in stark contrast to efforts to align AI language models with human interests.

WarGames (1983)

WarGames is an ‘80s classic to many, but it has a more limited following than some of its contemporaries. If I pick a random student to ask about movies, there’s a good chance they heard of or saw Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but not its nuclear war-focused predecessor, WarGames, starring the same young Matthew Broderick. It is overwhelmingly a nerdier film, focusing on the plight of a computer-obsessed slacker who wins the girl by hacking her grades instead of borrowing a Ferrari. Under the layers of charming clichés, though, the film grapples with the ramifications of putting critical systems under machine control and taking humans out of the loop. We clearly didn’t learn our lesson, but it’s a great watch anyway!