Fiction relevant to AI futurism

This page is an incomplete collection of fiction about the development of advanced AI, and the consequences for society.

Details

Entries are generally included if we judge that they contain enough that is plausible or correctly evocative to be worth considering, in light of AI futurism.

The list includes:

1. works (usually in draft form) belonging to our AI Vignettes Project. These are written with the intention of incrementally improving their realism via comments. These are usually in commentable form, and we welcome criticism, especially of departures from realism.
2. works created for the purpose of better understanding the future of AI
3. works from mainstream entertainment, either because they were prominent or recommended to us.¹

The list can be sorted and filtered by various traits that aren’t visible by default (see top left options). For instance:

• Type, i.e. being mainstream entertainment, futurism, or specifically from our Vignettes Project, as described above.
• Relevant themes, e.g. ‘failure modes’ or ‘largeness of mindspace’
• Scenario categories, e.g. ‘fast takeoff’, ‘government project’, ‘brain emulations’
• Recommendation rating: this is roughly how strongly we recommend the piece for people wanting to think about the future of AI. It takes into account a combination of realism, tendency to evoke some specific useful intuition, ease of reading. It is very rough and probably not consistent.

Many entries are only partially filled out. These are marked ‘unfinished’, and so can be filtered out.

We would appreciate further submissions of stories or additional details for stories we have here, reviews of stories in the collection here, or other comments here.

Collection

The collection can also be seen full screen here or as a table here.

Related

• AI Vignettes Project

Notes

1. We collected traditional fictional works via requests on social media, here and here