A.I. Killers

Mithfânion

Lord of the Wild Hunt
Joined
Dec 25, 2001
Messages
3,393
Does anyone know a book that features quite powerful creatures of Artificial Intelligence?

I came to the subject after watching both Spielberg's A.I. and Cameron's "T2" this weekend and I figured I'd see if anyone could recommend me some good fiction books dealing with this concept, showing the possibilities (and limits) of A.I.
 
William Gibson's Neuromancer features an A.I. by the name of Wintermute, but the book isn't really "about" the A.I., even though it figures into the story quite prominently.
 
The City Fathers in Blish's Cities in Flight... the Hobb's Land Gods in Sheri Tepper's Sideshow (though they are not very well described)... Mike in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by that one really annoying author... huh, I feel like I'm missing something really seminal, but I can't think of much. And the ones I listed aren't killers.
 
Did you read the books about Berserkers by Fred Saberhagen? They feature a full robots/mechs/machines army (perhaps made by men themselves centuries before) whose only goal is to annihilate all the living forms.
I read a couple of his books, and often the Berserkers are more cunning than men; but a warning: I read a couple of his books and didn't like them, they are very introspective and action - if any - is very very marginal.
 
Let's see....

Speaker for the Dead and subsequent Ender novels by Orson Scott Card, features Jane, Ender's AI friend
2001 by Sir Arthur C. Clarke features the every Friendly HAL
Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan features a plethora of AIs
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep among many others by Philip K. Dick
 
CrossOver by Joel Shepherd
features as the main character a A.I. in the form of an Humanoid Android named Cassandra Kresnov and alot of the book deals what it means to her to look human but be so much more powerful than the people around her.
 
Dan Simmons Hyperion series uses AI; Ken McLeod's Cassini Division and The Stone Canal do (or rather the aftermath, if I remember). Many of Asimov's short stories used Multivac/Univac (now rather sadly more reminicient of a household domestic appliance!). Iain Banks's spaceships have AI; Harlan Ellison's short story 'I have no mouth and I must scream' is set inside some sort of malevolent computer...

ASH A Secret History also uses a form of AI (but not really in the sense you mean I think!)

Hobbit
 
...I forgot: give a look to the books about the "Bolo" by Keith Laumer too!
 
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Noted by industry analysts as the first ever SF book.
Definitely has an aspect of AI to it

Poul anderson's "Genesis" is veritably steeped in AI.
 
DOH!

Thank you, Trailhound - Poul Anderson's Harvest of Stars also has a main character that is 'sort-of' AI - it's a person who has downloaded himself into a computer as a sort of future insurance policy. (The character Anson Guthrie seems to be based characterwise (grumpy, lecturing) on another famous SF writer, whose middle name was Anson :D)

Don't know how I forgot that one.

I know that it's not quite what's wanted here, but might be worth a look. In the the same vein, Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon was one of my best reads of last year - very violent, but deals in a future where people can be stored in the future and then put into new bodies (sleeves) when required.

Hobbit
 
YES! to Altered Carbon, though mentioned a couple times already, the repeating is only to justify the quality of the work. My official review for the book should be posted soon. Great stuff there and it may be cliched, but I'll say it An Impressive Debut Novel!!
 
Originally posted by Hobbit

(...) deals in a future where people can be stored in the future and then put into new bodies (sleeves) when required.

Hobbit [/B]

I know I'm going off topic, but there's a thing I'd like to share with you: some days ago I happened to watch a science program on tv. They were talking about the possibilities of human colonization in space, stating it is impossible with actual technology: the colonists - after centuries (and generations) on a spaceship would evolute in a different way than men (for example they could become some kind of apes with arms in place of legs, due to gravity absence), so today the only way we can imagine space colonization is by using robots which would activate once on the planet and do scheduled tasks, preparing (or terraforming) that world in wait for humans to come.

So they started to talk about cyborgs and that very probabily humans of next centuries will have mechanical components (surely a jack to connect their brains with computers and up/download data) and so on; at last, they came to the point this book, "Altered Carbon", remembered to me what they told. In fact they fancy a far future when a single spaceship will carry all the human consciences to the borders of space: no humans, no biological tissues, only chips or whatever will be in the future, each with a person's brain contents. No more mortal and perishable bodies...humans won't be human anymore, but they will become machines too...........scary. :(

The scientists were simply excited, "that day we'll defeat Death", they proudly told (they said it could be theorically possible to copy - destroying brain's biological tissues - to copy the brain contents to an informatic file), but I think instead that that day humanity will lose itself. I can't think to humans with even a single, microscopical mechanical part, let alone cyborgs: but the idea that one day we could even leave our fleshy bodies to dress cold robotic suits or become just chips...it's just a nightmare.

What do you think about?
 
The same as you do, that it's a terrible nightmare and that if I had to live in that day and age I'd probably want to kill myself (whether I had the guts to do so is another matter).
 
SF movie Demon Seed (with Julie Christie) was adapted from a Dean Koontz book... The Forbin Project is based on D.F. Jones' novel Colossus... and let's not forget 'Deep Thought' in Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers...!
 
The Eschaton in the story "Singularity Sky" by Charles Stross is an AI - it wipes out entire Planets if their population become too dangerous. (Seems fairly powerful to me).

Theophagos
 

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