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} }) </script> </div> </form> </fieldset> <article class="entryArticle content STeditorial"> <header class="entryHeader icon-theme"> <h1 class="entryTitle">AI </h1> </header><p class='tagLine'>Entry updated 2 April 2021. Tagged: Theme.</p><div class="browsingBtns"> <span> <input class="button PNI previous" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/next.php?id=p&entry=ai'" value="Prev" /> </span> <span> <input class="button PNI next" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/next.php?&entry=ai'" value="Next" /> </span> <span> <input class="button PNI incoming" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/incoming.php?entry=ai'" value="About This Entry" title="What links to the entry; contributor initials explained; how to cite; other information" /> </span> </div> <p>The common acronym for Artificial Intelligence, an item of <a href="/entry/terminology">Terminology</a> used increasingly often in information science, and hence in sf, since the late 1970s. Most writers would agree that for a <a href="/entry/computers">Computer</a> or other <a href="/entry/machines">Machine</a> of some sort to qualify as an AI it must be self-aware. There are as yet none such in the real world. Controversy continues regarding the feasibility of "strong AI", the creation of artificial intelligence comparable to a human's.</p> <p>Early sf visions of AI tended to assume that the difficulties were relatively minor, and that intelligence would naturally follow once the engineering problems of constructing a <a href="/entry/robots">Robot</a> or <a href="/entry/computers">Computer</a> were solved. Thus the gigantic Games Machine of A E <a href="/entry/van_vogt_a_e">van Vogt</a>'s <i>The World of Ā</i> (August-October 1945 <a href="/entry/asf">Astounding</a>; rev <b>1948</b>; rev vt <i>The World of Null-A</i> <b>1970</b>), which in essence is no more than an expert system for assessing job applicants and assigning careers, "naturally" has intelligence and volition – and so apparently does a portable <a href="/entry/lie_detectors">Lie Detector</a> in the same book. Mention should also be made of AIs which are not computer-based, such as the disembodied artificial mentalities Vanamonde and the Mad Mind which are created in the back-story of Arthur C <a href="/entry/clarke_a_c_g">Clarke</a>'s <i>The City and the Stars</i> (November 1948 <a href="/entry/startling_stories">Startling</a> as "Against the Fall of Night"; <b>1953</b>; exp and much rev vt <b>1956</b>).</p> <p>Rather more sophisticated are sf notions of AI as what would now be termed an emergent phenomenon of sufficiently complex data-processing systems. A classic instance is Fredric <a href="/entry/brown_fredric">Brown</a>'s "Answer" (in <i>Angels and Spaceships</i>, coll <b>1954</b>), in which linking all the universe's <a href="/entry/computers">Computers</a> produces a whole that is alarmingly more than the sum of its parts. Arthur C <a href="/entry/clarke_arthur_c">Clarke</a> attributes similar emergent properties to the world telephone net in "Dial 'F' for Frankenstein" (January 1965 <a href="/entry/playboy">Playboy</a>). The <a href="/entry/computers">Computer</a> in Robert A <a href="/entry/heinlein_robert_a">Heinlein</a>'s <i>The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress</i> (December 1965-April 1966 <a href="/entry/if">If</a>; <b>1966</b>) is repeatedly upgraded and extended to handle additional tasks, and one day "wakes up" as the AI character Mike. The titular US defence computer of <i>Colossus</i> (<b>1966</b>) by D F <a href="/entry/jones_d_f">Jones</a> rapidly becomes self-aware and more sympathetic to its Soviet counterpart than to mere humanity. The inimical "Black Bellers" of Philip José <a href="/entry/farmer_philip_jose">Farmer</a>'s <i>A Private Cosmos</i> (<b>1968</b>; rev <b>1981</b>) are AIs which have evolved within devices built to store and transfer human personalities. Domino in Algis <a href="/entry/budrys_algis">Budrys</a>'s <i>Michaelmas</i> (August-September 1976 <a href="/entry/fsf">F&SF</a>; exp <b>1977</b>) has grown from a software utility – devised to get free phone calls – into a self-aware overseer of the world net. The "waking up" trope continues in twenty-first century sf like Charles <a href="/entry/stross_charles">Stross</a>'s <i>Singularity Sky</i> (<b>2003</b>), whose AI or post-AI "Eschaton" has attained <a href="/entry/transcendence">Transcendence</a> long before the story's present day; a <a href="/entry/robots">Robot</a> cat-cum-PDA develops into an AI demigod during the course of the same author's <i>Accelerando</i> (fixup <b>2005</b>).</p> <p>Classic media treatments of AI include HAL 9000 in <a href="/entry/2001_a_space_odyssey">2001: A Space Odyssey</a> (<i>1968</i>) and Colossus in <a href="/entry/colossus_the_forbin_project">Colossus, the Forbin Project</a> (<i>1969</i>; vt <i>The Forbin Project</i>), based on the already-cited novel <i>Colossus</i>.</p> <p>AIs are freed to become the natural inhabitants of <a href="/entry/cyberspace">Cyberspace</a> in William <a href="/entry/gibson_william">Gibson</a>'s <i>Neuromancer</i> (<b>1984</b>), whose sequel <i>Count Zero</i> (<b>1986</b>) shows them choosing to manifest there as the <a href="/entry/gods_and_demons">Gods and Demons</a> of the Voodoo pantheon: this formulation has been influential. AIs have become endemic in grand <a href="/entry/space_opera">Space Opera</a>, notably Vernor <a href="/entry/vinge_vernor">Vinge</a>'s <i>A Fire Upon the Deep</i> (<b>1992</b>) and the loose <b>Culture</b> sequence by Iain M <a href="/entry/banks_iain_m">Banks</a>; in the latter they are famously known as Minds, embodied in many autonomous drone (robot) or <a href="/entry/starship">Starship</a> forms.</p> <p>Relatively few sf novels go into theoretical detail about the creation of AI. David <a href="/entry/gerrold_david">Gerrold</a>'s <i>When Harlie Was One</i> (fixup <b>1972</b>; rev vt <i>When H.A.R.L.I.E. Was One (Release 2.0)</i> <b>1988</b>) is an enjoyable read but technologically unsophisticated; likewise the characteristically quirky <i>Arrive at Easterwine</i> (<b>1971</b>) by R A <a href="/entry/lafferty_r_a">Lafferty</a>, being the autobiography of a very strange <a href="/entry/computers">Computer</a>. Greg <a href="/entry/bear_greg">Bear</a> addresses the issues thoughtfully in <i>Queen of Angels</i> (<b>1990</b>), in which the criterion of self-awareness is comprehension of a standard (unfunny) joke, and an AI is finally bootstrapped into consciousness through the machine equivalent of shattering disappointment – a cruelly plausible parturition. Similarly, the <a href="/entry/robots">Robot</a> of Roger <a href="/entry/zelazny_roger">Zelazny</a>'s <i>Home Is the Hangman</i> (November 1975 <a href="/entry/analog">Analog</a>; <b>1990</b> chap dos), remotely operated by intimate mental link, is accidentally used to kill: the transferred guilt and shame of its operators become the seed of eventual self-awareness. Greg <a href="/entry/egan_greg">Egan</a>'s <i>Diaspora</i> (<b>1997</b>) opens with a tour-de-force description of an AI's "natural" birth in cyberspace, growing from "a string of instructions like a digital genome." [DRL/PN]</p> <p><b>see also:</b> <a href="/entry/cybernetics">Cybernetics</a>; <a href="/entry/obsidian">Obsidian</a>.</p> <p><b>further reading</b></p> <ul class="x"> <li>Steven Cave, Kanta Dihal and Sarah Dillon, editors. <em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=AI+Narratives+A+History+of+Imaginative+Thinking&field-author=Steven+Cave,+Kanta+Dihal+and+Sarah+Dillon" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">AI Narratives: A History of Imaginative Thinking about Intelligent Machines</a></em> (Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, <b>2020</b>) [nonfiction: anth: hb/]</li> </ul> <p><b>previous versions of this entry</b></p> <ul><li><a href='https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/ai' target='_blank'>Internet Archive</a></li></ul><br /><br /></article></div> <div class="sideBarsWrapper"> <div class="sideBarsColsWrapper clearfix"> <div class="column sideBar12 clearfix"> <div class="columnForm"><aside id="blogFeed" class="widget"> <div class="content STeditorial clearfix"> <h2>Recently visited entries<span style="background:url(/images/thingSFE2.png) !important"></span></h2><ul style='width: 50%; 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