"In the end, in a lot of science fiction depictions of AI, the machine is mostly a reflection of the time in which it wa...

"In the end, in a lot of science fiction depictions of AI, the machine is mostly a reflection of the time in which it was written, and it rarely is about AI itself. AI also reflects the technology of the time, and for most of the existence of the genre, it has been quite limited.The best depictions of AI tend to be about AI becoming self-aware, and therefore bypassing our comprehension. Pantheon, as I mentioned, is quite good at that. While I think it’s a bad movie, Transcendence gets the weirdness of AI right I think. Other really good AI portrayals can be found in Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End, where the AIs are mostly expert assistants embedded everywhere and they help people research, translate, and organise information. Another accurate AI is the Illustrated Primer in The Diamond Age. This is an electronic book that teaches through conversation, adapts to the learner, answers questions, invents stories on demand, and walks through reasoning rather than simply giving answers. There’s...