News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:How accurately did science fiction stories predict AI? by ajb on Friday November 06, 2026 @12:55AM (#50388702)
It's interesting how the Hard SF authors (at least, the ones I read) had poorer predictions than the more fantasy-like ones. Asimov, who was considered a giant of the field, thought that AI (robots) would have difficulty with ambiguity, creativity, and lying. This trend extends all the way to Star Trek's Data. Looking back on it, this view was probably based on Asimov consciously or unconsciously basing his robots on the more autistic of the scientists that he knew.

Whereas fantasy authors write stuff like "a sufficiently large pile of books becomes an intelligence" (Pratchett) and that's pretty much what's happened...

Re:How accurately did science fiction stories predict AI? by cowlevel on Friday November 06, 2026 @01:03AM (#50388738)
AI attempts at the time were based on modelling and logic, not machine learning. Whereas soft SF authors were just like "there are people made of computer chips".
Re:How accurately did science fiction stories predict AI? by JuniperMesos on Friday November 06, 2026 @01:11AM (#50388785)
Mid-20th-century hard sci-fi authors were not sufficiently Bitter-Lesson-pilled. Which is unsurprising, that essay was written in 2019.
Re:How accurately did science fiction stories predict AI? by vlovich123 on Friday November 06, 2026 @01:28AM (#50388889)
Asimov’s AI was based around the positronic brain which simulated organic neurons if I recall correctly.
Re:How accurately did science fiction stories predict AI? by cowlevel on Friday November 06, 2026 @02:21AM (#50389220)
"positronic" is just a scifier version of "electronic"
Re:How accurately did science fiction stories predict AI? by vlovich123 on Friday November 06, 2026 @01:10AM (#50388778)
I think you’ve misread Asimov. Asimov highlighted the problem of alignment before it had a name and generated stories out of rule-based attempts to solve alignment.

I don’t recall his robots having problems with creativity nor lying - precisely Daniel in the post-Foundation books was found to have developed a zeroth law which he used not only to lie but also to creatively get the universe back on Seldon’s plan after the Mule disrupted it. There were also stories in the robot/Spacer era pre-Foundation where robots lied precisely because they had to to save a human life or themselves. And the robots were creative - the human inspector those series followed relied on the creativity of his robot companion to help him.

Re:How accurately did science fiction stories predict AI? by ajb on Friday November 06, 2026 @04:32AM (#50390176)
Well, it is a very long time since I read Asimov himself. I may be over-indexing on the Roger McBride Allen authorised series, which portrayed robots as attempting art, but not really succeeding as being creative.

But I thought in the lying thing Daneel was unusual in succeeding.

Re:How accurately did science fiction stories predict AI? by vlovich123 on Friday November 06, 2026 @10:35AM (#50393607)
Lying was uncommon in the sense that Asimov only had a few such stories. I don’t recall if it was treated as a complete anomaly or happens sometimes.

Liar!: robot can read minds due to manufacturing defect, realizes words can cause harm to humans and starts lying because of the first law.

Mirror image: robot lies to protect master’s reputation

Risk: perception of robot lying although in reality it followed instructions too literally

Little lost robot: weakened first law robot engages in malicious compliance.

So quite a few stories